Our daughter was grown by then, but losing him left me feeling untethered in a way I had not felt since I was twenty-two.
And for 30 years, I never spoke to Callum or my family.
Then my younger sister found me online.
Her message appeared one afternoon while I was sitting at my kitchen table.
At first, I thought the name had to belong to someone else.
Then I saw her photograph.
Thirty years had changed her face, but not enough.
I stared at the screen until the words blurred.
Dad was dying.
Her message was short.
“Please come home, Eloise. He keeps asking for you.”
I read it over and over.
My first instinct was to close the laptop.
My second was anger.
After three decades, that was all it took to pull me back?
One sentence?
Then I imagined my father old and sick.
I had spent half my life trying not to wonder whether he hated me.
Now he was asking for me.
At 52, I finally agreed.
The flight home felt shorter than the bus ride away had been.
I barely slept the night before.
My sister had sent instructions about where she would meet me.
I read them several times during the flight.
