Chapter 4

The next morning my phone buzzed me awake.

The family group chat, the neighborhood group, all of it lit up with messages.

The video someone had secretly filmed in the stairwell last night had already spread.

In the clip there was only one white-haired old man, sitting on the steps.

Weakly, he said,

"I raised this daughter for twenty-eight years, and now she won't even let me stand outside her door."

The next cut was me calling the police.

The headline was even blunter.

《A Widowed Father Raised His Daughter Alone for Over Twenty Years, One Lapse in Care, and She Calls the Cops to Throw Him Out》

Below it, only a single line:

"The conflict started over an old blanket the man accidentally damaged."

I stared at those words, and something clamped down in my chest.

Six hours.

Three stitches.

The cut on my hand.

The thing my mother left behind.

All of it pressed flat into "one lapse."

The comments kept climbing.

Some called me an ungrateful wretch.

Some said it was fine, the kid had been found.

Others asked,

【Why didn't they just dump a daughter like this when she was little?】

When I saw that line, my fingers froze.

The phone kept buzzing right after.

Coworkers had recognized me.

The company had been dug up too.

I hadn't been at work half an hour before my boss handed the afternoon client meeting to someone else.

He didn't blame me.

And because he didn't, I had nowhere to put the anger burning in me.

The moment I stepped out of the office, the preschool called.

Some parents had recognized the video too.

That afternoon, when I went to pick up Nora, I caught someone asking the teacher,

"Her grandpa won't be coming to pick her up anymore, right?"

The teacher said from now on it would just be me.

Only then did the woman pull her own child a little closer to her side.

Nora saw it.

On the way home, she didn't say a word.

Only when we were almost at our building did she ask,

"Mommy, why don't they like you?"

I crouched down.

"Because they don't know what happened."

She thought about it for a while.

"Then I won't tell them Grandpa forgot me."

Something in my chest tightened.

She added, quieter,

"And I won't say I'm scared of him."

"That way people won't yell at you."

My nose stung.

A four-year-old already learning to keep quiet, to carry the fallout for the grown-ups.

Exactly like me, twenty-four years ago.

I pulled her into my arms.

"You don't have to swallow anything for anyone."

Back home, I sent my aunt just one message.

【Get everyone together tonight.】

At seven that evening, the living room was full of relatives.

The moment I walked in, every eye landed on me.

Whatever they said, it came down to the same few things.

My father had raised me alone.

The child had already been found.

An old man makes one mistake, and it shouldn't be pushed this far.

At first I was angry.

By the end, I only felt tired.

Nora was hurt.

I was hurt.

The moon-patterned quilt was torn.

My job and the preschool had both been dragged into it.

Yet what this whole roomful of people cared about most was still why I couldn't forgive.

My father kept his head down the whole time.

Only when they'd more or less run out of words did he sigh.

"I won't come around anymore."

"She doesn't need me either."

My uncle looked at me right away, as if waiting for me to soften.

But I suddenly remembered the way my father's eyes had slid away last night.

"Since you all say he's the one who raised me."

I looked at my father.

"The year I was four, he went off to play cards and told me to sit and wait outside the corner store."

"All these years, he kept telling me he got drunk afterward, that he thought someone else had brought me home."

The room got noticeably quieter.

My aunt was about to tell me not to dredge up old grievances when a cousin's husband beside her lost patience first.

"Didn't Ruby Dickerson go find your dad afterward that day—"

He stopped halfway, and shut his mouth.

I went completely still.

"When?"

I stared at him, my voice trembling a little.

"When did Ruby go find my father?"

My father slammed his cup down on the table.

"Enough!"

I looked at him, my eyes red.

His face had already changed.

The unease inside me went flat in an instant.

I didn't argue with anyone else.

I just took out my phone and called Ruby.

My father shot to his feet.

"Gladys, don't call!"

Everyone in the room looked at him.

The call connected.

I put it on speaker.

"Ruby."

"I only want to ask you one thing."

I looked at my father and asked, one word at a time.

"The year I was four, I waited a whole night outside the corner store."

"Did my father know I was still there or not?"

The other end was silent for a long time.

The color drained slowly from my father's face.

Finally, Ruby spoke.

"He knew."

My mind went blank.

"I knocked on your door that night."

"Told him you were still outside."

My hands started to go cold.

"So what did he say?"

Ruby paused.

"He said let her wait."

"A night in the cold and she'll learn to come home on her own next time."

I held the phone and didn't move.

For twenty-four years, I'd believed he had only forgotten.

That excuse, I'd kept for him for twenty-four years.

Now it was gone.

I lifted my head to look at my father, and two lines of tears slid down.

He was already shouting.

"She's lying!"

But suddenly I didn't want to fight with him.

My chest still hurt.

But heavier than the anger was the exhaustion.

I looked around again at the people who, moments ago, had been teaching me how to be a daughter.

No one looked at me.

In that moment I didn't even have the urge to make them understand me.

I didn't want to hear explanations.

I didn't want to wait for anyone to admit I'd been wronged.

I lowered my head.

Wiped the tears away.

Pushed the phone into the middle of the table.

My father's face changed completely.

"Gladys, what are you trying to do?"

I raised my head, looked at them, at the lost expressions on their faces just now.

And suddenly I laughed.

"Didn't you all say he's the one who raised me?"

I pulled out a chair and sat down.

"Then let's start from the year I was four, and settle it, account by account!"