…”…you deserved to have a father somewhere, even if he could only stand on the sidewalk. —Walter.” I sat in the car for a long time. Walter. My mother had told me my father’s name was Walter. She’d told me he died before I was born.
I drove to the address on the bottom of the note. A small house twenty minutes from mine. The man in the gray overcoat opened the door before I knocked. “I hoped you’d come,” he said.
He told me everything at his kitchen table. He’d been an alcoholic when my mother was pregnant. He’d been violent once. Once was enough. She left, and she told everyone he was dead, because it was easier than explaining. He got sober two years later. He begged to see me. She said no.
“Then she called me when you were ten,” he said. “She said she’d let me watch you from a distance. Once a year. Your birthday. Walk past your house. Never speak. If I ever broke the deal, she’d go to the police.” He touched the envelope. “I kept it for thirty years. That photo of your kitchen window is from your last birthday. You were laughing on the phone.”
“And the exam?” I asked. He smiled. “I’m a volunteer at the nursing school’s admissions office. I saw your name come through on the registration list. I told your mother. She cried. She was so proud.”
I didn’t know what to feel. Angry that she lied. Sad for both of them. Strange, sitting across from a man with my exact chin.
“She let me come to the funeral,” he said quietly. “She wrote it in her will. She said, ‘Walter can speak to her now.'”
We have coffee every few weeks now. He’s seventy-four. He brings me old photos of my mother when she was young. In June, I passed the nursing exam. He was there when I opened the results, standing in my kitchen, inside the window this time.
