“You must be Susan.”
“Yes.”
“I’m Caroline.”
She paused.
Then she added, without a trace of warmth:
“Thomas’s real daughter.”
Every word landed exactly as harshly as she intended.
David shifted beside me.
Caroline stepped aside.
“He’s upstairs.”
I walked past her.
Thomas was lying in a large bedroom at the end of the hall.
He looked smaller than I had imagined.
For years, I’d pictured the man who abandoned me as something larger than life.
Someone powerful.
Someone who had made a decision and simply moved on.
But the man in front of me was just an old man lying beneath a blanket.
Thin wrists.
Hollow cheeks.
Sunken eyes.
He looked fragile.
Human.
When I stepped into the room, his eyes filled with tears almost immediately.
“You look exactly like Annie.”
I didn’t sit.
“Did you know where I was?”
Thomas closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
One word.
It was enough.
“You knew?”
“Susan…”
“I went into foster care when I was six.”
“I know.”
“I slept in eight different houses before I turned twelve.”
His mouth trembled.
“I know.”
“I went to bed hungry.”
He looked away.
“I wore shoes until the soles split open.”
I swallowed the anger rising in my throat.
“And you lived here?”
Thomas started crying.
“Don’t cry like this happened to you.”
He flinched.
“You’re right.”
I turned toward the door.
Then his hand caught mine.
“I have no excuse, Susan.”
I looked down at his fingers wrapped around my hand.
“And I have no right to ask you for anything,” he whispered.
“Then don’t.”
His grip loosened.
He took a breath.
“Give me seven days.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
His breathing was shallow.
“Because time is something I don’t have.”
I should have walked out.
Instead, I sat down.
The first day, I barely spoke.
Thomas didn’t push me.
He seemed to understand that there were twenty years between us that couldn’t be erased by a few conversations.
The second day, he asked if I still hated pears.
I frowned.
“How would you know that?”
“Your mother hated them.”
“So?”
His mouth twitched.
“So did you. Even mashed into baby food.”
