My body turned instinctively, my heart hammering so hard I thought it might burst. I couldn’t look at him—at the frayed patch on his vest, the grease under his nails, the desperate hope in his eyes that I’d refused to see for years. My crimson gown brushed against my legs as I walked away—from him, from everything I’d buried since I was fourteen, the moment I decided I was better than him.
I’d told everyone at Harvard my father was dead.
“What did your father do?” my roommate once asked, glancing at the blank wall where no picture of him hung.
“He wasn’t anyone important,” I said evenly. “He died when I was young.”
And, in my mind, he had. The man who smelled of sawdust and sunlight, who’d read to me at night, was gone the day my mother left. The father I adored was replaced by a stranger—his face shadowed with fatigue, his hands scarred by years on the road, his love hidden beneath layers of oil and exhaust. He sent me away to live with my aunt, and the money came—quiet, consistent, impersonal. Money orders. Nothing more.
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