Mom.”
Mom. That word hurt more than all the others. Marissa snatched the envelope addressed to Dad. “This one isn’t open.” “No,” Sophie said. “But there were more envelopes. Torn. Empty. In the same box.”
The house went dead silent. Then I understood. Dad had received letters. Dad had chosen which ones to keep, which ones to tear up, which ones to hide under old receipts as if the past could simply be filed away.
The three of us went downstairs to the living room. Dad was washing dishes, softly humming a song that never seemed to end. When he saw us, the color drained from his face. He looked at the bag. Then at the letters. And he aged all at once.
“Why?” I asked. I didn’t yell. It came out worse. It came out like a little girl.
Dad turned off the faucet. He dried his hands on a towel. He took so long to speak that Marissa let out a sob of anger. “Because I didn’t want her to hurt you again.” “And you decided for us?” “Yes,” he said, his eyes welling up. “And I was wrong.”
That “I was wrong” didn’t fix anything, but it opened something up. Dad sat in the chair where he had checked our homework so many times. He looked smaller.
“The first letter arrived when Sophie was in the hospital. Your mom said she wanted to see you girls. I hadn’t slept in three nights. Marissa cried over everything. You, Val, had stopped smiling. And I thought: if I let her in, she breaks us all over again.” “She was our mom,” Sophie said, trembling. “I know.” “No,” I answered. “You don’t know. Because you knew she wrote. We didn’t.”
Dad covered his face. I had never seen him like that. My dad, the man who learned how to braid hair, who sold his lunch hour to buy medicine, who never blamed me… had also stolen a truth from me. And the truth doesn’t change its edge just because it comes from someone you love.
“I was angry,” he confessed. “I was destroyed. And when I read that she wanted to explain, I thought: now she wants to talk, after she left us in ruins. I thought protecting you meant keeping the door locked.” “You protected us from her,” Marissa said, “but you also left us with questions.”
Dad cried silently. That broke me the most. Because I realized that in our house, no one had been a complete monster and no one had been a complete saint. We were wounded people making decisions with our hands covered in invisible blood.
No one slept that night. The next morning, I put the photo of Patty’s Salon on the table. “I’m going to look for her.”
Dad looked up. “Val…” “I’m not bringing her back. I’m not forgiving her just because. I’m not going to pretend nothing happened. But I need to look her in the eyes and hand back what she left me.”
Sophie wiped her tears. “I’m going with you.” Marissa chimed in. “All three of us.”
Dad wanted to say something, but stopped himself. Then he pulled an old notebook out of a drawer and wrote down an address. “I found it years ago,” he admitted. “I never went.”
I took the paper. For the first time, I didn’t ask anyone’s permission to open a door.
Chicago smelled of rain when we arrived. The salon was on a narrow street, wedged between a bodega and an office supply store. The sign looked just like the one in the photo, only older. Patty’s Salon: Nails, Cuts, Color.