I entered alone.
Mom began almost immediately.
“We forgive her for everything, Pastor. We only want our daughter back.”
I looked at her.
“For everything?”
She blinked.
“What exactly are you forgiving me for?”
Dad shifted.
“Colleen—”
“No.”
I turned to him.
“You threw me out at nineteen. I didn’t run away. I didn’t abandon this family. You removed me from it.”
Nobody spoke.
Then I asked what I had waited fifteen years to ask.
“Say his name.”
Dad frowned.
“What?”
“My husband.”
His jaw tightened.
“Say his name.”
Mom whispered, “This is ridiculous.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Dad stared at me.
He couldn’t do it.
For fifteen years, Silas had been “that man.”
“That Callahan.”
“Trash.”
Anything except himself.
I leaned forward.
“His name is Silas Callahan.”
Dad’s hand tightened around his cane.
I took a breath.
“And the night your heart stopped in that kitchen, Silas Callahan was the man who brought you back.”
Mom stopped crying.
Aunt Deborah’s mouth fell open.
Pastor Nylin looked sharply at Dad.
My father went white.
“Is that true?” Deborah whispered.
Dad looked at the floor.
“Yes.”
The word barely existed.
I waited.
Then Dad finally raised his head.
