Chapter 1
I stood at the station exit while crowds poured past me like a relentless tide. Some people hugged each other. Others waved from a distance. A child ducked under the railing and rushed straight into the father's embrace.
My own father's quiet words kept replaying in my head.
"You shouldn't have come."
" They don't know I have a daughter."
I was nothing more than a chapter from his past he wanted to close for good, someone who had no place in the new life he had built.
It was my first time on a train. As it gathered speed, I pressed myself against the seat, my heart hammering so hard it rattled my chest.
When I was seven, my mother passed away. My father was buried in gambling debt. He dropped me off at my grandmother's house, said he was going south to find work, then vanished down the dirt road outside our town. I never saw him again.
I had pleaded with him over the phone. "Dad, could you send me a recent picture? I want to know what you look like now."
Maybe he thought I was being silly. Maybe it never mattered to him. He mailed home enough gifts to fill an entire room, yet never included a single photo.
When I counted the years, it had been 14, 14 years since I had last seen my own father.
I had pictured him in my mind countless times. Had he put on weight or grown lean? Had the sun darkened his skin? Had his hairline crept back? Were the scars on his palms from swinging a sledgehammer at the quarry still there?
I imagined him waiting in the most obvious spot outside the station, holding a welcome sign with my childhood nickname scribbled across it. The moment he spotted me, he would rest his broad hand on my head and smile. "You've gotten so tall."
I stayed awake through the entire four-hour ride.
The man next to me smiled and started chatting. "Going to Avermont City all by yourself, young lady?"
I smiled back, "My dad's waiting for me there."
"That's good to hear." He nodded. "There's nothing better than a father and daughter seeing each other again."
My fingers tightened around my canvas bag. Inside was the Christmas ham Grandma had gotten up before dawn to make, wrapped in layer after layer of plastic wrap. She always said my father loved it as a boy. One Christmas, he had finished a huge piece by himself.
The savory smell of the Christmas ham lingered inside the bag. I suddenly froze. The excitement that had carried me all this way had somehow slipped away.
I sent my father my location.
Lily: Dad, could we meet, just this once? I won't bother you. Please.
The message vanished into silence. I waited at the station exit for one hour, then another.
Every middle-aged man carrying a briefcase and wearing pointed leather shoes made me lift my head and stare. But not one of them was my father.
My phone was nearly dead. I held it tightly in my hand.
At last, my father's reply came through.
