…”1996? Because they’re the same story.”
Above us, I heard a knock on the front door. The police officer, finally. I should have gone up. Instead, I asked him his name.
“Frank,” he said. “I’m your father.”
My mother always told me my father set fire to our house when I was a baby and went to prison for it. That he was dangerous. That he’d never be allowed near me. She died when I was twenty-four, still telling me the same story.
I went upstairs and let the officer in. Frank climbed out of the crawlspace slowly, with his hands where everyone could see them, and sat at my grandmother’s kitchen table. The officer ran his name. Arson, 1996. Nineteen years served. Released eleven years ago. No warrants. No violations.
“Ma’am,” the officer said, “do you want him removed from the property?”
I looked at the envelope in my hand. I said I’d like to read it first.
It was a letter from my mother, written in her careful handwriting, dated three months before she died. My grandmother had kept it in her Bible. In it, my mother said she’d started the fire. She’d been sick, really sick, the way she sometimes got, and she didn’t remember doing it until much later. My father took the blame so she wouldn’t lose me. He pleaded guilty. She let him.
“I couldn’t make myself tell her,” the letter said. “Mom, please give her this when she’s old enough. And please tell Frank I’m sorry.”
When he got out of prison, he had nowhere to go, and a court order still kept him away from me. My grandmother believed him. She let him live under her house, where the neighbors wouldn’t see him, and fed him every Sunday. He said he only wanted to be close enough to hear about me.
The man asking about the house last week turned out to be a developer. He’d wanted to buy it before I moved in.
I asked the officer to leave Frank where he was. Then I called a lawyer who works with an innocence project, who is now helping him petition to clear his name.
Frank lives in an apartment five minutes from me now. A real one, with windows. Every Sunday, I bring him dinner. He says it’s the best tradition he’s ever inherited.
