“Frank called last month. He could barely speak.”
She paused.
“He said you might come one day.”
“Might?”
“He hoped he would find the courage to send you.”
I didn’t understand.
She opened the door wider.
“I think you should come inside.”
Every instinct told me to return to the hospital.
Instead, I stepped through the doorway.
“Tell me what Frank lied about.”
Caroline didn’t answer.
Instead, she walked into the kitchen and opened a drawer beside the stove.
Inside was a collection of old metal cookie cutters.
Hearts.
Flowers.
Animals.
Apples.
And one small star.
I stopped breathing.
I knew that cutter.
It was identical to the one Frank had used every Sunday of my childhood.
“Where did you get that?”
Caroline carefully lifted it.
“It belonged to Frank.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“His is at my house.”
“He had two, dear.”
Beneath the cutters was a photograph.
Caroline picked it up and handed it to me.
A little girl stood beside a kitchen table.
In front of her was a plate of star-shaped apple pancakes.
She looked about five years old.
Behind her stood a much younger Frank.
He was thinner.
His hair was darker.
And he was smiling in a way I had never seen before.
“Who is she?”
Caroline’s voice trembled.
“Her name was Miley.”
The room seemed to shrink around me.
“Who is Miley?”
“Frank was married before he met your mother.”
She looked down at the photograph.
“Miley was his daughter.”
I gripped the picture.
“Where is she?”
Caroline lowered her eyes.
“She died when she was five.”
The words were quiet.
But they hit me like a physical blow.
“There was an accident at a lake,” Caroline continued. “It happened quickly. Frank blamed himself, even though there was nothing he could have done.”
I sat down.
My legs could no longer hold me.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“After Miley died, his marriage collapsed.”
Caroline sat across from me.
“He stopped speaking to people. He stopped answering my calls. We were best friends, but he shut everyone out.”
She touched the photograph.
“He packed away every picture, every toy, every reminder that he had ever been a father.”
My eyes returned to the little star cutter.
“The pancakes.”
Caroline nodded.
“He made them for Miley.”
Then she told me something I had never known.
“One morning, after he married your mother, you climbed into his lap and fell asleep against his chest.”
