if he could send the recording to Denise, too, so somebody else had a copy. I agreed. Then he asked whether I had eaten. It was the sort of question he would have asked any morning before that Sunday. I told him yes and ended the call before either of us could pretend everything was normal.
Denise watched me put the phone down. "Was it recorded?" she asked. I nodded. She sat beside me without reaching for me, waiting until I could say what I needed to say. "I thought I'd feel better," I admitted. "But I keep hearing him tell me to leave."
"Proof can correct an accusation," she said. "It can't unhear a sentence for you. That part takes time." She wasn't trying to make me bitter. She was giving me permission to be hurt without feeling guilty about it.
Dad came to Denise's house that evening. He stood on the porch holding my mother's two photo albums and the little wooden clock wrapped in a clean towel. He had never looked nervous about entering my aunt's house before. That night he asked whether he could come in. Denise opened the door wider but didn't offer him a shortcut through the conversation. She made coffee and left us in the dining room, close enough to hear if voices rose but far enough away to give us space.
Dad put the albums on the table. "I should have protected these," he said. "I should have protected you."
"You could've asked me one question," I replied. "One real question. You didn't even want to know what I was saying."
He stared at his hands. He told me he had been afraid of another marriage failing, afraid of going back to the empty house after my mother died, afraid that admitting Vanessa was wrong would mean he'd made a terrible mistake. "So I told myself I was being fair to my wife," he said. "But I wasn't being fair to you. I treated the first story I heard as the only one that mattered."
I wanted to forgive him. I also wanted him to understand that wanting to forgive someone and being ready to trust them were different things. "You always taught me to stand by the truth," I said. "When it mattered most, you made me feel like the truth didn't count if it came from me."
He nodded, his eyes wet. "I know. I'm going to have to earn your trust again, and you get to decide what that looks like." He asked whether I wanted to come home, and I said not yet. He asked if there were things I needed from the house, and I gave him a list: my acceptance letter, my work boots, my school papers, and the rest of Mom's books. I told him I would arrange a time to pick up the furniture later. I didn't want him to carry everything over as if he could rebuild the relationship by moving boxes.