"Pretend I'm Your Dad" Hells Angels Told The Girl — Then She Found The Reason

“No.” He poured water into a mug. “But you might want information before you decide how.”

Sarah set the knife down.

“That was annoyingly reasonable.”

“I get lucky.”

She leaned against the sink.

“Did you ever get tired of being careful?”

“Most of the trouble I caused started right after I got tired of it.”

She looked at him, then at the black crumbs in the basin.

“I hate that you can say things like that and make me listen.”

Hank smiled faintly. “Michael said the same thing. Usually right before ignoring me.”

Velez did not forbid Sarah from returning home. She explained the known risks, the men still unaccounted for, the precautions already in place. Sarah listened and decided on a shorter visit first. She wanted clean clothes, her mail, and the chance to stand in a room that had belonged to her before the case.

Ruth went with her. Hank stayed behind because she asked for an hour that did not include him watching every door.

He said yes without making her explain twice.

At the apartment, the dry cleaner downstairs waved through the glass. The bicycle was still in the wrong place. The mail included a grocery coupon and a notice about water being shut off for repairs the following week.

Sarah put both on the table.

For a while she simply walked around touching things. The chipped edge of the counter. The plant she always forgot to rotate. The blanket on the couch. She watered the plants and opened a window two inches.

Ruth sat at the table and read the grocery coupon as if it contained important literature.

Sarah went into the bedroom. On the wall above the dresser hung a photograph from her high school graduation. Diana stood beside her, smiling so hard it looked painful.

Sarah took it down.

She looked at the empty place on the other side of herself in the photograph. She had never noticed it before. Of course there was no literal space reserved for a man who was not there. But now she could see the shape of what the day had been missing.

She put the photograph back.

Then she opened the bottom drawer and took out an old notebook.

At thirteen, she had written a letter to her father. She had never mailed it because there was no address. She remembered some of the words well enough that her face warmed before she found the page.

I hope you have a good life. I don't need you. Mom says people make choices and this was yours.

Below that, in smaller writing, one question.

Did you ever ask what my name was?

Sarah sat on the bed.

Ruth knocked once at the open door.

“Do you need me?”

Sarah looked at the notebook.

“Yes.”

Ruth came in and sat beside her.

Sarah showed her the page.

The older woman read it without speaking. When she finished, she rested a hand on the quilt between them.

“You were trying to protect yourself.”

“I was being cruel to somebody who couldn't answer.”

“You were thirteen.”

Sarah stared at the question.

“He didn't even know my name.”

“No. But he knew you were coming.”

She nodded, and cried for the girl who had thought the question meant she was unwanted.

When they returned to the house, Hank was repairing the porch board. He looked up as the car stopped, then went back to work when he saw Sarah was all right.

She stood beside him while Ruth carried the bag inside.

“I wrote him a letter when I was thirteen,” she said.

Hank set down the screwdriver.

“It was mean.”

He waited.

“I told him I didn't need him.”

Hank looked at the screw between his fingers.

“He'd have known that wasn't the whole truth.”

“You can't know that.”

“No,” he said. “I know he wouldn't have held a child responsible for being hurt.”

Sarah nodded slowly.

“I want to write another one.”

“Then you should.”

“I don't know where to send it.”

Hank looked toward the trees.

“Maybe the point is writing it.”

That afternoon, she began.

Dad felt impossible at the top of the page. Michael felt too far away. She wrote both, crossed neither out, and kept going.

She told him about the diner. About Toast. About the college application. About the time she tried to fix the bathroom faucet herself and flooded a drawer full of towels. She told him she was angry he had trusted the wrong people, then felt guilty and wrote that too.