As soon as she buckled her seatbelt, she looked at me and asked, in a small, nervous voice, “Is it okay if I call you Dad again? For real this time?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or pull over to hug her — so I sort of did all three at once. She had no idea how much those words meant after a decade of being in her life.
When I met Zahra, she was raising a toddler on her own. Amira was still waddling around with crooked pigtails and socks that never matched. Jamal was already fading in and out — one month showering her with promises, the next disappearing like smoke. I never understood how someone could be so inconsistent in a child’s life and still expect the world to revolve around them.
I never tried to replace him. I just showed up. Every single day. Every milestone, every school moment, every nightmare. I was the steady person in her life — the lunches, the sick days, the preschool events. Eventually she started calling me “Daddy,” and it fit us both.
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