Finding My Father's Truth

The day my dad vanished, I was ten. The night before he was jogging beside my wobbly bike,

big hands steadying the frame whenever I leaned too far. The next evening his chair at dinner

was empty and his coat was gone from the hook by the door. Mom cried whenever

I asked, so I learned to stop asking. For fifteen years the silence sat

in me like a missing tooth, and I filled it with rumors about debts and secret

lives. Last month an unknown number lit up my phone. A woman said she

had known my father and asked to meet. We sat in a tiny coffee shop with chipped mugs and

sticky tables. Her name was Clara, and her hands shook around a warm cup. She told me he did