Father and Daughter

“I’m so sorry,” I managed. I finally stood up and placed the picture frame in its original spot. For some reason, I just couldn’t stop staring at the photograph. They looked so happy and yet all of that was gone now... Suddenly, I felt as though I were expected to bring that happiness back into Dan’s life. But I was no match. I wasn’t his daughter or his wife.

Dan approached me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Please don’t worry about it,” he said with a smile. “It’s something of the the past.”

I nodded and he went back to the door for our bags. He set his briefcase on the couch and passed me. “Come on,” he said, walking up the stairs. “I’ll show you the rooms.”

I followed him, my dirty sneakers pattering up the wooden steps. When we reached the landing, a hallway revealed two doors on each side and one down the center, at the end. I assumed that the last room was Dan’s.

“The first one on the right is the bathroom. You can choose from either the two on the left or the one next to the bathroom.” He looked down at me and noticed I was staring at the center door. “Go on,” he said. “You can look at all of the rooms if you’d like.”

I took careful steps down the hallway and checked the first room on the left. I knew, from the moment I walked in, that that was the room I wanted. The walls were painted an ice blue and almost everything in the room contrasted it with their black or navy blue color.

“I’d like this one,” I said. “Blue’s my favorite color.”

Dan chuckled and stood next to me in the doorway. “I knew you would choose this one. I actually repainted and refurnished it last week. The room used to be all pink.” He paused. “Destiny loved pink.”

I looked up at him and shook my head. “Is it okay if I have this room? I mean, I don’t want to--”

“No, no. It’s alright,” he said. “This room was meant to be the most intriguing out of them all. To be honest, the other two rooms are really boring.”

He was right. After he showed me the other two available bedrooms, I was glad I followed my instinct. The walls were the original, bland white they had been painted in when the house was first built. Though I was curious to see what Dan’s room looked like, I turned away from it.

“There’s also a pool in the backyard if you ever want to go swimming,” he said. “It’s supposed to get hotter as the summer goes on, so you can use it whenever you’d like.”

I didn’t know how to swim, but I was too embarrassed to tell Dan that. I just agreed and thanked him, hiding my humiliation.

Dan handed me my bag. “That’s pretty much it... Make yourself at home. I’ll be downstairs in my office, okay?”

Even though the blue room was my choice, I still felt guilt. When I walked in, I imagined Dan working his ass off to cover up what used to be his daughter’s room. I wondered where her old furniture was as I set my suitcase onto the bed covered in blue and black sheets. Perhaps Dan threw it all away so he could save himself from pain. The thought made me ponder if he changed up his entire room so he wouldn’t be reminded of his wife’s absence.

Does that really work? I thought. Does covering up the past really make you forget?



An entire week passed. On the weekdays, Dan would get up at nine o’clock to get ready for work and leave by nine thirty to open up Myla’s. He left the house all dressed up in slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie. The only things about his outfit that remained casual were his brown leather work boots.

If I wasn’t awake by the time he left--which happened on the first day--he’d leave me a note, telling me where he went and when he’d be home. He usually came home ten minutes after seven and greeted me. I was usually in the living room, watching something from his movie collection or in my room, reading To Kill a Mockingbird.

During the week, after he realized how ragged my clothes were, he took me to a clothing shop on Main Street and let me pick out anything I wanted. Although I didn’t know how to swim, I grabbed a black, one-piece swimsuit.

On Saturday, I decided to head down to the pool. I stared at the body of water in fear, narrowing my eyes at the tile piece that marked the deepest end of the pool--six feet. I took a few steps upon the descending stairs at the three-foot end and suddenly stopped when the water reached above my waist. My heart was pounding and I was frozen where I stood.

Dan emerged from the glass sliding door that I had come out from. He stood there, in a charcoal gray, long-sleeved henley and a pair of jeans. He smirked at my anxious posture. “Is the water too cold?”

“No...” I said. I sighed before I spoke again. “I don’t know how to swim and I’m just really scared.”

“Oh...” His smile vanished and he nodded. “Let me grab my shorts and I’ll help you, okay?”

“Okay,” I replied reluctantly. I awaited his return nervously and attempted to step further into the water before freezing again.

Dan returned in the same shirt and a pair of black swim trunks. He sat at the edge of the pool and was about to jump in before I stopped him. “Wait,” I said, giggling. “Why are you wearing your shirt?”

He laughed prudently. “I’m a little self-conscious, I guess.”

“Come on,” I insisted with a grin. “You’re not the one who’s learning how to swim ten years late.”

“Alright...” he said, reaching for the bottom of his shirt. “You’re going to think I’m strange, though.” He took off the shirt and revealed a dragon tattoo that covered the majority of his right arm. The dragon’s tail spiraled around his forearm and stopped where his wrist met his hand. The detail of the tattoo was so realistic that it appeared as though the dragon could snap its jaws and roar at you.

“Wow...” I said, gaping at the tattoo.

“I know, it’s rather excessive,” Dan said, slipping into the water.

I shook my head. “No, it’s awesome, Dan.”

He held his hand out after thanking me and I took it. My body began to tense up as he pulled me closer to the deep end. As soon as we were past the five-foot mark, I was on my toes, trying to keep my head above water. “Wait!” I said. “Hold on.” I began to hyperventilate.

Dan turned around and pulled me into his arms. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got you... Just relax. Try kicking your feet. It’ll help us stay up.” He moved us into the heart of the six-foot end.

I looked down and began to kick my feet just as he was and soon enough, my muscles were relaxed. “Good... I’m going to let go of you. Keep doing what you’re doing and if you feel yourself sinking, just push your arms down into the water and kick a little faster to stay up.”

He let go of me, moving a couple of feet away, and I sank almost immediately. I did as he instructed me to do but struggled to stay at the top. I was getting tense again. My head fully submerged into the water and I began to panic as I held my breath. Dan reached down for me, lifting me to the surface and into his arms again.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I moved my soaked hair out of my face and laughed. “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Sorry about that. I panicked.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, equally amused as I was. “Nobody gets it on the first try. Let’s just work on your kicking for now.”

I leaned my head against Dan’s shoulder and wrapped my arms loosely around his neck. Several moments passed--all in silence--and, against my expectations, it didn’t feel awkward. Dan and I remained in place, floating in the cool water. The seasonal heat warmed us as the sun peeked through the gaps in the trees, calming us both.

I knew he was probably thinking of Destiny and how much he missed her. Though most adopted kids would feel jealous or angry about being a “replacement,” I didn’t feel that way. I knew I wasn’t a replacement or a surrogate daughter. Dan wanted to start a new journey with another person that he could express his love for after being alone for so long. And I was glad to be that person.

I forced back a question that had been on the tip of my tongue for a week but somehow, Dan knew what I was thinking. It was one of those coincidental occasions where someone else was thinking about the same thing.

“I lost Myla and Destiny to a drunk driver five years ago,” he said. “After Myla closed up the shop, they were headed to the Italian restaurant on the East end of town to plan a surprise dinner for me because my birthday was in a week. I wanted to go, but Myla said that it was ‘top secret.’” He laughed quietly. “The path out to the East is a winding road and a couple of teenage boys were drinking while they were driving on the wrong side. They apparently didn’t see Myla’s car coming around the bend and just kept going... One thing I’m thankful for is that the impact took Myla and Destiny right away--they didn’t suffer.”

My lip trembled as tears bundled in my eyes and rolled down my face. “I’m so sorry,” I replied in a weak voice.

Dan looked at me, taken aback by my tears. “Hey,” he said. His tone of voice had returned to normal and he smiled. He smeared away a tear on my cheek just before it fell into the water below our heads. “Don’t cry for them. They’re better off where they are now. After they died, people would often tell me about heaven and God’s loving arms...”

“So, you believe in heaven?”

He shrugged and swayed his hand over the top of the water, creating ripples that traveled through the pool like a tremor. “I’m not sure, actually,” he said. “Sometimes I wake up and turn over, thinking that Myla’s still there. There’s times where I even see her laying there, but she’s gone by the time I blink. Even after five years, I still revert back to thinking that they’re alive.”

I was silent after that. I wasn’t sure what to say. Suddenly, I really began to feel like I needed to be Dan’s savior. Thinking about myself that way forced pressure on my shoulders, but for the man who rescued me from three more years at a rundown orphanage--it was nothing. Dan was that rare type of person. The one you never got to see because he didn’t put himself in the spotlight.

Even with Dan’s amazing qualities, it was difficult to know that such a tragic thing had happened to him.

“What happened to the boys?” I asked.

“The passenger died because he decided not to wear his seatbelt,” he said. “I wish I knew where the driver was.”

“He’s not imprisoned?”

Dan shook his head. “He ran away. In fact, his entire family disappeared--including their little girl. They just cleaned out some of their belongings and skipped town a week before the trial. The father of the family had a reputation to maintain. He was the basketball coach of Aether Falls High and his son was working his way up the team’s ladder. Destiny knew the boy briefly. She had a couple of classes with him.”

I tried to imagine how an entire family could get away with something like that. “The police are still looking for them... aren’t they?”

“They gave up after three years. They just sat me down and told me that there was nothing they could do. No tracks, no vehicle or license plate matches... Nothing.”

“Do you think the family’s dead?”

“No,” Dan replied. “They’re floating around somewhere.”