I never noticed the big man in our doorway. I just noticed how my mom wasn’t there anymore.

Mae told him that the secret was out—that the daughters he’d loved from a distance now knew.

Later, Jeffries would tell me that he kept quiet because he didn’t want to do any more damage to another human being. And his daughters were the very last ones he would want to ruin.

I was learning that that’s my dad for you, but again—another time and another story.

I always liked to remember that my first words to him as I shuffled into Mae’s new bar and took the perch beside him were, “You’ve been here the whole time.”

Apprehension, love, nervousness, caution, all those emotions were rolled together as he stared at me, but all I saw was the love. A father’s love and I’m slowly realizing that it’s a special entity on its own. I have my right to anger, the right to call him a coward, but I’d just been given a rebirth at life. I wasn’t holding grudges.

I didn’t have time for that anymore.

And Erica…

It still took me a while to visit her. The cemetery remained intact, and the headstones stood upright strongly.

I thought about that, too, and envisioned that mass of water that crushed everything else. It hadn’t touched what lay buried underneath. The tombstones stayed in place and watched everything become uprooted above them.

I sat with my back resting on her tombstone, and I read the letter she left for me. She knew that I was coming back. Somehow, it felt right that she had been the one to know. A bird nearly crashed into me, but after I folded up her letter, I just looked up and grinned.

I love you, too.

I turned and left. Jonah was waiting for me, along with our daughter.

We named her Erica Daniella.

THE END