He said, “If that boy ever comes back here I’ll have to tell him what his father asked me to do in 1999, and I said no.” I stood there holding the old glove and suddenly understood why his voice sounded so frightened. I asked what my father had asked him, and Tom looked toward the woman sitting at the kitchen table before answering. He told me my father had asked him to stop seeing me after he came home because he didn’t want his son becoming attached to another man. Tom said he had refused, but my father warned him that if he kept coming around, he would make sure Tom lost his job and his house. Tom stayed away anyway because he thought disappearing was the only way to keep the argument from reaching me.
I asked him why he had never told me once I was grown. He said my father had made him promise that if he ever contacted me, he would tell me the truth, but only if I came looking for him first. Then Tom opened a drawer and pulled out a small envelope with my name written on it in my father’s handwriting. Inside was a note dated three days after we moved to base housing, and it said, “He needs to forget you.” Tom said he kept it because he couldn’t bring himself to throw away the only proof that his leaving hadn’t been his choice. I read it twice and realized that for twenty-five years I had believed Tom simply stopped caring about me. He looked at me and said, “I cared enough to stay away when staying would have made your life harder.”
I started crying and told him that those four years had been the reason I learned how to drive, how to shave, and how to show up when someone needed me. I told him I had spent years wondering why the man who had been there every week suddenly disappeared without saying goodbye. Tom reached for the glove and smiled when he saw the worn stitching I had repaired myself at fourteen. He said he had kept wondering whether I would ever remember him. I told him I remembered everything, even the things I hadn’t understood at the time. Before I left, he asked if I would come back next week, and I said yes. Then he held up the glove and said, “Good, because I think you still owe me a rematch.”
