I used to think some people were born incomplete, like the universe got distracted halfway through making them and just let 'em loose, unfinished and jagged at the edges. My old man? He was one of those. All the necessary parts but no spine, like an unassembled engine rusting away in some forgotten backyard.
I didn't think much about him growing up - not like the other kids did, sitting around wondering why their fathers weren't around. I didn't wait by the window on my birthday or fill my head with questions I already knew were too big for my mother to answer. He was just a gap in the story, like a missing page in a book nobody was ever gonna finish reading. His absence wasn't a hole in my world; it was just... a place where he should've been but wasn't. A signature missing from a permission slip. A shadow you don't notice until someone points it out.
The first time I really felt the weight of his absence was in third grade. They gave us one of those family tree assignments, the kind that's supposed to make you feel connected, like you've got roots, but usually just serves to remind you of all the branches that never grew. My mom's side, I had down easy - her parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. But when I got to my father's side, I froze. Just sat there, staring at the paper, pencil hovering, waiting for some kind of sign. Nothing came. I ended up drawing a big fat question mark where his name was supposed to go. When the teacher saw it, she asked me what happened. I just shrugged.
"Don't know him," I said.
I remember the way she hesitated, like she was deciding whether to dig deeper or let it go. She let it go. Moved on to the next kid, the next neat little lineage, the next set of names and dates, all tied up in a bow. Meanwhile, I sat there with my question mark, like that one little symbol somehow summed up an entire bloodline.
My mother wasn't big on reminiscing. She treated the past like some overdue bill - shoved it in a drawer and prayed it'd disappear. Anytime his name came up, she'd scowl, change the subject, and move on. Eventually, I stopped asking about him. Stopped thinking about him, except for those rare moments when his absence would hit me - the occasional Father's Day, some idiotic school project, or when some stranger would ask me about my parents in plural.
I got good at wearing his absence like armor. If anyone asked, I'd just shrug and crack a joke. "Guess he wasn't into diapers." Or, "He must've been allergic to responsibility." People would laugh, and I'd move on, never giving them a chance to feel sorry for me. I didn't want their pity. Hell, I didn't even want an explanation. I just wanted it to be simple.
But life? Life's got this habit of taking the stuff you think you've got figured out and flipping it upside down.
It happened on one of those afternoons that you forget the second they're over. I was nineteen, stuck working some dead-end gig at a dive bar, the kind of place where the clock never moved and the smell of stale beer was a permanent fixture. I was sweeping near the counter when Danny, the guy I worked with, tossed a stack of mail onto the register.
"You got something," he said.
I frowned. Who the hell sends me mail? Bills, probably, but those don't come in envelopes with handwritten addresses. I picked it up, flipped it over, and saw a name that made my stomach drop.
His name. My father's.
The return address? Somewhere I didn't recognize. No postmark, no return label. Just my name, scribbled in shaky handwriting, like the writer had second-guessed every single letter. I stood there, broom still in hand, the world suddenly feeling too small. My heart was beating in my ears.
For years, I'd played out the script in my head - what I'd say if he ever came back into my life. If he called, if he showed up, if he decided to write me a goddamn letter. And here it was: thin, unassuming, and carrying God knows what inside.
I stood there, staring at it, not sure if I wanted to open it. I always figured my old man bailed because he was a piece of shit. Some men drink, some gamble, some just vanish. He was one of the vanishing types - disappearing into the ether before I even had the chance to hate him the way a kid should.
My mother, as brittle as a cigarette's last drag, never spoke about him beyond the occasional insult: "bastard," "coward," "dick with a driver's license." That was enough for me.
I built my whole childhood around the assumption that my father was a spineless fuck-up who ran at the first sign of responsibility. Simple, clean truth. One I could hold onto without questioning.
But now, here it was - this letter, a manila envelope stuffed with old documents, yellowing newspaper clippings, and a birth certificate with my name but a different man's. I took a long pull from my drink, let the ice rattle in the glass, and looked again. The name? Not his. Not anyone's.
Turns out, my mother wasn't the tragic widow of a runaway. She was the goddamn kidnapper.
My "father" had been looking for me all these years, while she kept running - different states, different schools, different shit apartments with locks that couldn't even keep a breeze out. My entire childhood? A long, drawn-out getaway.
And the worst part? I wasn't even mad. Just disappointed. Disappointed that everything I'd built myself on - every scrap of anger and resentment - had been based on hating the wrong man. The real father, the one who never ran, the one who was apparently footing the bill for every therapy session I never showed up to? Alive, well, and likely wondering why he'd ever bothered.
I finished my whiskey in one go and laughed. Not a chuckle. Not a nervous laugh. A full-body, exhausted kind of laugh. The kind that happens when you realize your entire existence has been a punchline you never got to tell.
I lit a cigarette, took a drag, and did the only thing that felt right.
I dialed the number in the letter. Waited. Waited some more. Then, when he picked up, I said,
"Hey, Dad. You still looking for me? Because I think Mom's finally run out of places to hide."