I shook my head.
“He said, ‘Good. Let him think I’m selfish and learn to rely on himself. He can find out I wasn’t after I’m gone, when it can’t make him soft.'”
Frank’s voice cracked.
“He was the proudest father I ever knew, and the worst at showing it. He came to your high school graduation, did you know that? Stood in the back by the doors because he said he didn’t want to make it about him. Cried the whole way through. Made me promise never to tell you.”
I thought about all those silent dinners.
All those nights I lay awake hating the man in the next room.
And him, in that room, lying awake too — worrying about me, saving for me, loving me in the only cramped and frightened language he had.
“Why you?” I finally asked Frank. “Why’d he leave the box with you?”
