At first, I refused to call him anything.
Not Frank.
Not Dad.
Nothing.
When he asked if I wanted toast, I pointed at the bread.
When he offered to read me a bedtime story, I pulled the blanket over my head.
My biological father had disappeared before I was old enough to form a real memory of him.
Even at four years old, I understood enough to distrust men who suddenly appeared carrying suitcases and promising to stay.
Frank never pushed.
That was the first thing I came to love about him.
He learned that I liked strawberry jam spread all the way to the crust.
He learned that I hated peas.
He learned that thunderstorms terrified me.
When I refused to let him come into my bedroom during storms, he simply sat outside the door until I fell asleep.
And every Sunday morning, he made apple pancakes.
Not ordinary pancakes.
Star-shaped pancakes.
He had an old little metal cutter that he pressed into the batter, making each pancake look like a crooked star.
I loved them.
Even though they were always burned around the points.
One morning, nearly three months after he married my mother, I wandered into the kitchen half-asleep.
Frank was standing at the stove.
Without thinking, I looked up at him and said:
“Dad, can I have another one?”
He dropped the spatula.
Neither of us said anything.
He simply picked up the least-burned pancake and placed it on my plate.
That was how it happened.
No ceremony.
No conversation.
Just one word that slipped out before I had time to think.
Dad.
Five months later, my mother died.
A brain aneurysm took her so quickly that my last real conversation with her had been about whether I had put my shoes away.
One moment, she was my mother.
Then she was gone.
The house filled with relatives.
People whispered in hallways.
They looked at Frank when they thought I wasn’t watching.
I heard things I wasn’t supposed to hear.
“He isn’t her real father.”
“Her aunt could take her.”
“He’ll want to start over.”
Those words frightened me more than the funeral itself.
I was four years old, and I had already lost one parent.
I couldn’t lose another.
The night after the funeral, I crawled beneath the kitchen table and pulled my knees against my chest.
I stayed there for hours.
