text: When my father left it was a shock to us all. He and my mom were so in love, and I remember when I thought he loved both his daughters, me as the eldest especially. We played chess and cards and I would fall asleep on his chest as we watched the late-night sitcoms. I thought he loved me enough to stay. I remember him being strong and tall, and a deep black handlebar mustache that he said was Jimmy Buffett inspired. On the last day I saw him, he was making breakfast - a completely normal day. He had cut himself while slicing breakfast fruits and I put a Band-Aide on it. He rustled my hair and called me his little future nurse. Then he was off to the store to get milk for our morning cereal, kissing my mom on the lips and Bea on the forehead. He said he’d be back soon, but he never came home. At first, we thought he was missing, and after months of searching it seemed that he wasn’t lost, “he had escaped” the detectives said, another way of saying he left us. Mom had us tell our friends that he went missing, maybe she was ashamed that he ran away to start a new family or something... I’m not sure. I was 10 years old. I was raised the rest of my life by a single mother, stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. She was stoic, when my dad left, although Bea and I knew how much she hurt inside. She never remarried, because, “although Daddy is a no-good piece of dirt and left us high and dry, I could never love another man again.” Her strength was one I always looked up to. Having a strong female role in my life was the best thing I could have asked for. On the anniversary of Dad leaving she would always get quiet, and it became a somber holiday for all of us. As the years went by my sister and I grew up independently, and I inherited the family home after our mom died. I became the local newspaper editor, had a nice family, a good career, and retired with a husband who loved me in the comfort of my childhood home. The years had turned all of us gray, and our joints popped and snapped when we moved, it was deeply comfortable, and I was happy. Early one morning someone knocked at my door. I hobbled to get it, shushing the barking dog. When I swung open my door a man stared at me from the stoop. He was tall and strong, with a black handlebar mustache. This man was holding a gallon of milk. It looked like my father, but it couldn’t be. Possibly a sick joke Bea was playing on me. “Theresa?” the man asked, looking weak and desperate in the doorway. “No, I’m Samantha, Theresa was my mother.” I replied, watching his facial expression change into one of complete confusion, awe, sadness, then love. “Samantha?" he paused, "I’m... I’m... your dad. I know you won’t even believe me but I promise I have an explanati - ” I slammed the door in his face and stormed to the kitchen. How dare he, whoever he is, play this joke on me? It has been 65 years since I last saw my father. I stopped, and look at the calendar on the refrigerator. July 11th, 2083. The anniversary of my dad’s disappearance. I felt as if the reality had become far away, and I was faintly aware of a continuous knocking at the door. In the storage cabinet was an old SIM card of pictures, one of them had to be of him. I plugged it into our home system and sifted through the memories, looking for a picture that must be buried deep down of my father. I think my mom wiped most of the pictures of him out of shame and anger. Finally, I came across a one that looked hauntingly familiar, a picture of him laying in the sun, smiling, probably taken a month before he left. I transferred it to the telelens, so that the picture shined in my hand. Walked back to the door, I opened it cautiously. There the man stood, looking exactly like I remembered my dad had. I lifted the thin glass of the telelens up to compare the picture to the man in front of me. Age had not touched him a day, whereas I had become a woman, and *old* woman at that. He was indistinguishable from the picture, down to the curl of his mustache, and the scab on his hand. That scab... he had cut himself, the morning he left, the morning that had been burned into my memory. Dad had cut himself on a knife while chopping Mom’s grapefruit. “Who are you?” I tentatively asked, worried of the answer. He took a deep breathe, “We really need to talk, honey.” I let him inside.