text: (WP) So Easy to Forget I haven’t seen my father since I was eight years old. He’d kissed my mother on the cheek, saying that he was heading out to get a carton of milk and a few other things, and he never came back. My mother’s eyes flicked to the door that day, but he didn’t return. To this day, no one knows where he went; it was as if he’d vanished. But he shows up at the door, all these years later, milk in hand, his clothing still pristine, looking as though he hasn’t aged a day. When my mother opens the door, she screams, a sudden burst of sound that shocks me even more than my father appearing out of nowhere. “Nathaniel? What happened to you? Where have you been all this time?!” My mother’s voice is choked, tight with unshed tears. “We thought you were dead!” He looks almost exactly the same, only his hair is longer now, and shot through with blond streaks, as if he’s spent all this time away from us in the sun. “I got lost, but I came back. I found my way back.” My father says, wrapping his arms around my mother. He looks whole and unharmed to my eyes, but his eyes are different, haunted. The piece of our family that was missing is suddenly found, but I can’t stop the unease and dread from filling my chest. I don’t know what, exactly, but something is not right. My mother, on the other hand, is overjoyed. She insists on going to the store to pick up all of my dad’s favorite things to make him a special meal. The thought of being alone with my father, a man who’s been gone for a decade, sets my skin crawling. But I decide the moment the door closes, I’m going to ask where he’s been. We deserve an explanation. I’ve hated him for a long time, since he walked away from our family. My mother seats him at the kitchen table with a beer, and as soon as she leaves, I pounce. “Did you leave us to start a new life somewhere else? Did you cheat on Mom with another woman? Do you have another family you’re not telling us about?” My father stares at me for one long, breathless moment, then takes a swig of his beer. “I was kidnapped, Gabby. I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s the truth.” I stare at him, nonplussed. Of all things I expect him to say, it’s not that. “I swear to God, Dad, if this is a lie to get out of leaving us for years--” “It’s not a lie, Gabs.” His voice goes quiet, and his eyes darken. “Who, then, Dad? Who did it?” “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” “Try me!” \*\* *The man out of time looks at his daughter, this young woman who was as high as his knee on the faithful day he’d been snatched from the human world. She looked the same, yet different: Her brown hair was the same as his, only straight like her mother’s, put up in a bun struck through with a pencil. She was a stranger to him, as foreign to him as the fairy world he’d been thrown into so many years ago.* *He’d just gone to the store for some milk. The last thing he’d expected was to be snatched off of the street and taken to a completely different world. It had been like something out of a dream: a pastel, candy-striped sky, awash with every color he could imagine, and the woman who had captured him was just as beautiful. Her skin was the rich brown of tree bark, and there were vine tattoos all over her that moved, undulating under her skin. She smiled at him, and her teeth were sharp and pointed.* *“Welcome to the land of the fairies. I’ve been watching you; you know. I can feel your longing, your desperation to be someone great. I can give you what you want. But faeries don’t give boons out for nothing, you know.” Her grin widened, and he had to stop himself from staring at her.* *She was beautiful, but she wasn’t his wife.* \*\* He’d found his way back, stumbling into the forest on the outskirts of the castle keep. Perhaps it was his brokenness that had opened the portal and sent him back to the human world. He didn’t know how long he’d been gone, but it must have been years, since his daughter was practically grown now. “I’m sorry,” He whispers now, knowing that the facts didn’t sound true. It sounded like something out of a fairy tale, but it had been real. “I know I can’t make it up to you now, but I am so sorry. I thought of you and your mother every second, every hour, every passing day. But in that world... It can be so easy to forget.