Two years after my mom died, my dad barely seemed interested in life anymore. Then he started going out every Friday with one of my old classmates, and suddenly he was smiling again. The strange part was, neither of them would tell me where they were really going.
Two years after my mom died, my dad, Jett, developed a routine so boring I could predict his evenings from another town.
Dinner at six. News at seven. Dishes washed immediately afterward. Lights off downstairs by nine.
Before Mom died, he rebuilt old radios, argued with neighbors about baseball, and somehow grew enough tomatoes to supply half the street.
He kept the house tidy, but even that felt mechanical, like he was maintaining a place he no longer inhabited.
Afterward, he stopped caring.
He kept the house tidy, but even that felt mechanical, like he was maintaining a place he no longer inhabited.
I visited twice a week. Sometimes I brought groceries. Sometimes I fixed something he could easily have fixed himself. Mostly, I sat across from him while the television talked for us.
Some nights he barely spoke, and I learned not to fill every silence just because I was uncomfortable with it.
We had never been close, but we knew each other well enough to say hello.
Then one Friday, I pulled into his driveway and saw Ava’s car leaving.
Ava had graduated with me. We had never been close, but we knew each other well enough to say hello at the grocery store.
When I walked inside, Dad was humming.
Actually humming.
I stopped in the doorway.
“What happened?”
“Who are you?”
He looked offended.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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