"I was... I was married to my father?"
A bowl of oatmeal on the table | Source: Midjourney
"Yes," I said softly. "I... I didn't know anything about you until now."
His voice trembled, a mix of curiosity and concern.
"I always wanted to reach out to him, but my grandparents said it might hurt him even more. They said he was angry because he couldn't take care of me. At one point, they told him he needed to distance himself from me for a while. I didn't know what to believe."
A girl talking on the phone | Source: Midjourney
The rawness of his words broke something inside me.
"He loved you," I said quickly. "He took care of you, Lily. He always cared about me. I think he just needed to take it easy on his own terms."
"Can I tell you I'm a mess, Barbara?" “She asked softly.
“Of course,” I replied.
Teenage girl on the phone | Source: Midjourney
I asked Lily for her address, and when we saw it was about a twenty-minute drive, I went to pick her up.
We talked for hours that first day, sharing stories and putting the pieces of Mark’s life together. Lily was 17 and almost an adult.
Over key lime pie and hot chocolate, Lily told me about her childhood, her grandparents, and her dream of studying photography.
A homemade cake on the kitchen counter | Source: Midjourney
“It’s not a career for the lazy, as my grandfather says,” she chuckled. “It’s about… capturing a moment we’ll never have again. And I’ve lost a lot of good moments in my life, you know? There are moments I’ll always doubt. Memories I could have had with my mother. With my father…”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea, honey,” I said. “You should show me some of your work sometime, okay?” ".
She smiled and nodded.
She wanted to know everything about Mark. The Mark I came to know and love.
A camera on a coffee table | Source: Midjourney
In the months that followed, Lily and I built a relationship that felt fragile and inevitable.
We spent hours looking at photos, laughing and crying, as we filled in the gaps in each other's lives.
Lily told me her favorite memory of Mark: how he taught her to bounce pebbles at a lake near her grandparents' house. I told him about his terrible habit of singing off-key in the car so I could laugh. We didn't say it, but I think we both felt it.
Photo albums on the table | Source: Midjourney
It was healing.
As winter turned to slow, I realized the truth. What I found in the garage wasn't just a piece of Mark's past. It was an invitation to expand my life in ways I'd never imagined. I kept wanting to spend more and more time with Lily. One day, I saw an ad for a photography course at the community college.
"Do I want to go?" I asked Lily on the phone, hoping she would say yes.
Continued on the next page 👇
If I want to continue, click the button "Wave" or "Advertisement" ⤵️