For two years, I walked my neighbor’s daughter to school. She called me Daddy. Then one morning, a man who looked just like her showed up, grabbed her hand, and told me he had a deal that changed everything.
Two years ago, after finishing my night shift, I was walking home when I heard a child crying.
It wasn’t loud, you know?
Just the kind of crying someone makes when they’ve already been crying for a long time.
I followed the sound. What else was I supposed to do?
It led me to a little girl sitting by a dumpster behind an apartment building.
She was wearing a school uniform, knees pulled to her chest, backpack on the ground beside her.
She looked up at me, startled, like she’d forgotten other people existed. Her eyes were red and swollen.
For a second, I thought she might run.
“They’re all gonna have their dads,” she said.
I crouched a few feet away. “Who is?”
“Everyone at school. Today is daddy-daughter day.” She sniffed hard and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“Oh… I’m sorry to hear that.”
“My dad’s in prison.” She kicked a small rock with the toe of her shoe. “And my mom died a long time ago. I live with my grandma, but she can’t walk well.
She told me to go by myself.”
Something inside me broke then.
See, I had always wanted a family. I was 56 years old, and once, a long time ago, I’d been a happy man.
I’d had a fiancée I loved.
Rebecca. We had a wedding planned, and dreams of kids and a house that felt full.
I used to imagine Sunday mornings with pancakes and cartoons and little voices calling me Dad.
A week before the wedding, she sat me down at the kitchen table and told me she was pregnant with her boss’s child.
Then she packed a bag and left. Just like that.
That was the day my life collapsed.
I fell into a depression so deep I stopped believing I was meant to have a family at all. I stopped believing in much of anything, honestly.
Biking saved me.
There’s nothing like speeding down the freeway on a bike to make you feel alive. The quiet rules of the community gave me a sense of stability, while the open road made me feel free.
For the past 30 years, that was my life.
At night, I worked as a security guard, but on weekends, I was free enough that I could pretend there wasn’t a gaping hole in my heart.
But standing there in front of that little girl, I felt something I thought I’d buried for good stir awake.
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