He still made my eggs in the morning, even when his hands shook. He still brushed my hair, though sometimes he had to lean against the dresser to catch his breath.
Eventually hospice came.
A nurse named Laura set up a hospital bed in the living room. Machines hummed. Medication charts covered the fridge.
The night before he died, he asked everyone to leave.
“Even me?” Laura asked.
“Yeah,” he said gently. “Even you.”
He came into my room and sat in the chair beside my bed.
“Hey, kiddo.”
“Hey,” I said, already crying.
He took my hand.
“You know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, right?”
“That’s kind of sad,” I joked weakly.
He chuckled softly. “Still true.”
“I don’t know what to do without you,” I whispered.
His eyes filled with tears.
“You’re gonna live,” he said firmly. “You hear me? You’re gonna live.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too,” he admitted.
He looked like he wanted to say something else but only shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“For what?”
“For things I should’ve told you.”
Then he kissed my forehead.
“Get some sleep, Emily.”
He died the next morning.
The funeral was a blur of black clothes, weak coffee, and people saying, “He was a good man.”
Back home, the house felt wrong.
His boots by the door. His mug in the sink. The basil drooping in the window.
That afternoon Mrs. Rodriguez knocked and handed me an envelope.
“Your uncle asked me to give you this,” she said softly. “And to tell you he’s sorry. I am too.”
Inside were several pages.
The first line read:
“Emily, I’ve been lying to you your whole life.”
My chest tightened as I read.
The crash hadn’t happened the way I believed.
That night my parents had come to Tom’s house with my overnight bag. They told him they were moving away for a “fresh start.”
They weren’t taking me.
“They said you’d be better off with me,” the letter said. “I lost my temper.”
He screamed at them. Called my father a coward and my mother selfish.
He knew my dad had been drinking.
“I could’ve taken his keys,” he wrote. “Called a cab. Told them to stay. I didn’t. I let them drive away angry because I wanted to win.”
Twenty minutes later the police called.
Their car had wrapped around a pole.
They were gone.
I survived.
Tom explained why he never told me.