“No amount of apology fixes what I put you through,” he said. “A father shouldn’t do that to his children.”
My tears fell, and his hand rose to wipe them away. His thumb brushed beneath my eyes the same way it used to when I was little, and life still felt safe. I let him do it.
The sob broke out of me without warning, the kind dragged from somewhere sealed shut for years. It felt like grief splitting open all over again.
“I don’t deserve to be your father.” He looked away and forced himself to stand. A low grunt escaped him as he straightened, pain tightening across his face before he buried it again. “I’ll call the doctor. Do you need something?” He looked confused. “I’ll get you water.”
“Dad.” He stopped but didn’t turn to face. “I missed you,” I admitted, and the honesty surprised me.
The anger was still there beneath everything else. Thequestions, too. Why did he hide the truth about our family, and why did he never tell us about Iker? I needed those answers, but I missed him too.
He came back smelling faintly of antiseptic, his body still hurting, his movements slower than they used to be. But he came and called me his daughter.
Dad turned and came back to the bed. His arms wrapped around me carefully at first, then tightened. He held me against him as if he were afraid to let go again.
“I’m sorry.” His lips pressed against the top of my head. “I should’ve fought harder. You were waiting for me that night.”
I remembered the night he never came home. He had been working the late shift. I stayed awake waiting for the sound of his keys at the door, thinking maybe he got called in for extra hours when midnight passed. Then morning came, and his phone stayed off. My texts remained unanswered. After two days, fear settled in.
When I reported him missing, the officers barely looked at me. They treated me like an inconvenience, standing behind a desk and asking impossible questions. Eventually, I stopped going because Cole needed food and one of us had to work.
“I’m back,” Dad whispered against my hair. “I’ll fight harder now.” He pulled away just enough to cup my face, both thumbs gently brushing across my cheeks. “I never stopped worrying about you.”
“Cole is grown now,” I said, my voice shaking again. “I took care of him.”
Dad nodded. A tear slipped down his face, and he didn’t bother hiding it. “You did.” His voice broke slightly. He pulled me against him again. “Now I’ll take care of both of you.”
A knock interrupted us, and Dad pulled back first. “I’ll get that.” He moved toward the door with the slight limp still visible in his stride. When he opened it, Anita stepped inside carrying atray while Caitlin and Cole followed behind her.
Caitlin crossed the room and dropped onto the bed beside me with barely contained excitement.
“Girl, we made two sales,” she announced. “Your marketing skills are actually terrifying. You better recover quickly because we have an organization to build.”
A small laugh escaped me despite everything. “We sold?”
She pulled out her phone and showed me the screen. I saw two separate orders and confirmed down payments. I stared at the numbers for a moment without fully processing them. My brain still felt slow, like everything around me was happening one step ahead of my thoughts.
Caitlin placed the phone on the bed beside me. “You should eat, take your medicine, and recover properly.” She pulled the tray onto my lap and handed me the spoon. “We are officially busy women now.”
I looked past her toward Dad. He was leaning against the wall across the room with Cole beside him. Cole was talking animatedly about something while Dad simply watched him with a smile that looked unfamiliar and deeply familiar at the same time.
“That’s my father,” I told Caitlin.
“I know.” She stirred the porridge. “He has been here since before you woke up.”
I took a spoonful of the porridge and thought about Dmitri. He arranged this. He was probably gone to work, but he still arranged for Dad to be here when I woke up. The realization settled slowly inside me, warm and complicated.
“This blunt food should motivate you to recover faster and start eating actual food again,” Caitlin said.
“It’s working already,” I admitted, and she laughed.
The day somehow turned into something better than I had expected. I couldn’t even decide which part mattered more,seeing Dad alive after years of silence or the sales from the business Caitlin and I built from nothing except stress, stubbornness, and too many sleepless nights.
Both were things I waited for in different ways.
My phone buzzed on the bedside table, and Caitlin handed it to me while laughing at something Cole said across the room.
I unlocked it and opened Dmitri’s message. I expected him to ask how I was feeling or whether I’d seen Dad yet. Instead, he sent a picture.
