PART 1 — THE SEVENTEEN CARDS
The first time I saw those seventeen Father’s Day cards, I understood something about Emily Carter.
She hadn’t stopped waiting for her father.
Not when she graduated from high school.
Not when she got married.
Not even when she turned thirty-five.
Her father had been gone for thirty years.
And every June, she still bought him a card.
I found out about those cards three days after her mother died.
I was sitting across from Emily in her mother’s kitchen. She had invited me over to help sort through some belongings.
We’d known each other for several years.
She was usually the person who remembered everyone’s birthday. She brought food when someone was sick. She called her friends just to check in.
But that afternoon, she barely spoke.
There were three cardboard boxes beside the kitchen table.
One contained photographs.
Another held old clothes.
The third was still empty.
Emily stood beside the sink, holding a cup of coffee she hadn’t touched.
“Mom kept everything,” she said.
I looked around the kitchen.
There were calendars from previous years, grocery receipts, old birthday cards, and several unopened packages of batteries.
“Apparently, she wasn’t someone who liked throwing things away.”
Emily gave me a small smile.
“She always said she might need them someday.”
Then she looked toward the hallway.
“I think there’s something in my old bedroom.”
I followed her upstairs.
She opened the door and stood there for a moment.
The room hadn’t changed much.
There was still a small wooden desk beside the window. A bookshelf stood against the wall.
A faded photograph of Emily at six sat on the desk.
She was wearing a yellow dress.
A man stood behind her, holding both her shoulders.
I recognized him from the few photographs Emily had shown me.
It was Richard Carter.
Her father.
“That’s the last picture I have of us together,” she said.
I looked at the photograph again.
“How old were you?”
“Five. Almost six.”
“Do you remember that day?”
She shook her head.
“Not really. I remember the dress.”
She touched the edge of the frame.
“Mom told me Dad took the picture.”
Then she turned toward the desk.
“I should probably start with the drawers.”
I helped her move a few books.
She opened the bottom drawer.
Inside were several notebooks, old school certificates, and a small wooden box.
It was tied with a piece of faded blue ribbon.
Emily stared at it.
For the first time that afternoon, she looked genuinely surprised.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
She lifted it carefully and placed it on the bed.
The ribbon came loose when she pulled it.
Inside were seventeen greeting cards.
Every single one had the words “Happy Father’s Day” printed on the front.
I didn’t say anything.
Emily picked up the first card.
It was dated June 16, 2007.
She opened it.
The handwriting was young and uneven.
Dear Dad,
I don’t know if you remember me.
I’m sixteen now.
I hope you’re doing okay.
I wish you would call.
Love, Emily.
She put it down.
Then she picked up another.
The next card was dated 2008.
The handwriting had changed.
It was more careful.
Dear Dad,
I graduated this year.
I looked for you in the crowd.
I know you probably couldn’t come.
I just wanted you to know I graduated.
Love, Emily.
I looked at her.
“You wrote these every year?”
She nodded.
“Every Father’s Day.”
“Did you ever send one?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
I waited.
She turned the next card over in her hands.
“I never knew where to send them.”
There was something I wanted to ask.
I didn’t.
Sometimes people tell you things when they’re ready. Asking too many questions can make them stop.
Emily opened another card.
This one was dated 2012.
Dear Dad,
I got married yesterday.
His name is Daniel.
He’s a good man.
I think you would’ve liked him.
I wish you could’ve walked me down the aisle.
I didn’t tell anyone that I was looking at the entrance during the ceremony.
I kept thinking you might come.
Love, Emily.
She stopped reading.
Her fingers rested on the last sentence.
“Did your mother know about these?” I asked.
Emily nodded.
“She found the first one when I was sixteen.”
“What did she say?”
Emily looked down.
“She told me to stop wasting my money.”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“She wasn’t being cruel,” Emily continued. “She just didn’t want me getting hurt.”
She placed the card back in the box.
“Mom hated talking about him.”
“Did she ever explain why he left?”
“She said he didn’t want to be a father.”
Emily said it without looking at me.
I could tell she’d repeated those words many times.
“She said he left one morning and never came back.”
“Did you ever try looking for him?”
“Of course.”
She gave a short laugh.
“When I was eighteen, I searched his name online. I called numbers that didn’t work. I even wrote to someone with the same last name.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
She reached into the box again.
There was a card from 2015.
Dear Dad,
I’m pregnant.
It’s a little girl.
Daniel and I have already picked her name.
We’re calling her Sophie.
I don’t know if you ever wanted grandchildren.
But you have one now.
I hope you’re still alive somewhere.
Emily closed the card.
I looked at the date.
“Did you write to him after Sophie was born?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell him about her?”
She nodded.
“Every year.”
Then she said something that stayed with me.
“I didn’t want Sophie growing up wondering if her grandfather loved her.”
She paused.
“I wanted him to have a chance to know her, even if he never wanted to know me.”
I picked up the most recent card.
It was dated the previous June.
The front showed a simple picture of a father holding his young daughter.
Inside, Emily had written only two sentences.
Dad, I’m thirty-five now.
I think I’m finally old enough to understand that you might never come home.
There was no signature.
No “Love, Emily.”
Just those two sentences.
“Why didn’t you finish it?” I asked.
She looked at the card for a long time.
“Because I didn’t know what to write after that.”
She sat on the edge of the bed.
I noticed her wedding ring.
She was turning it slowly with her thumb.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“When I was little, I used to think he was coming back.”
She looked at the photograph on the desk.
“Whenever a car stopped outside, I’d run to the window.”
“Emily…”
“Mom would tell me it wasn’t him.”
She smiled, but her eyes were wet.
“After a while, I stopped running to the window.”
She looked at the wooden box.
“But I never stopped buying the cards.”
I sat beside her.
For a few minutes, neither of us spoke.
Then she picked up the photograph again.
“Do you know what I remember most about him?”
“What?”
“His shoes.”
I looked at her.
“His shoes?”
She nodded.
“I remember sitting on the floor, trying to tie his shoelaces. I couldn’t do it properly.”
She wiped her cheek.
“He kept telling me I would learn.”
She looked at the photograph.
“I don’t remember his voice anymore.”
That was when she started crying.
Not loudly.
She covered her mouth with one hand and held the photograph with the other.
I didn’t try to comfort her with words.
There wasn’t anything I could say that would give her back thirty years.
We continued sorting through the room.
Emily put the cards back into the box.
She was about to close the lid when something caught my attention.
There was a small envelope underneath the ribbon.
It was yellowed around the edges.
Unlike the greeting cards, it had never been opened.
Her mother’s handwriting was on the front.
For Emily.
Nothing else.
Emily turned it over.
There was a date in the bottom corner.
September 14, 1996.
She stared at it.
“That’s the year Dad left.”
I looked at the envelope.
“Did your mother write this?”
“I think so.”
“Have you ever seen it before?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
She carefully opened the flap.
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
She pulled it out.
The first line was written in her mother’s handwriting.
My darling Emily,
There is something about your father that I should have told you years ago.
Emily stopped.
She read the sentence again.
Then she looked at me.
Her face had changed.
“What is it?” I asked.
She handed me the paper.
I read the next few lines.
I know you believe he left because he didn’t love you.
I let you believe that because I thought it would hurt less than the truth.
I stopped reading.
Emily took the letter back.
Her hands were shaking.
“Why would she write that?”
I didn’t have an answer.
She continued reading.
Then she reached the bottom of the page.
There was one final sentence.
If you ever meet a woman named Margaret, please listen to her before you decide what to think about your father.
Emily read the name aloud.
“Margaret?”
She turned the paper over.
There was a telephone number written on the back.
Below it, her mother had added something else.
She has been looking for you.
Emily looked at me.
“Who is Margaret?”
I didn’t know.
Neither did Emily.
But the date on that letter bothered me.
September 14, 1996.
Thirty years earlier.
Her mother had kept that letter for all those years.
And apparently, she had known someone was looking for her daughter.
We sat in silence for a while.
Then Emily reached for her phone.
She typed the name Margaret into the search bar.
There were hundreds of results.
None of them meant anything.
She looked at the number again.
“I don’t think I can call.”
“You don’t have to.”
She placed the letter on the desk.
“I just buried my mother three days ago. I can’t deal with another secret.”
I understood.
She had spent most of her life trying to understand why her father had left.
Now she was being asked to question everything her mother had told her.
Before I left, Emily placed the letter inside the wooden box.
She closed the lid.
Then she put all seventeen cards back on top of it.
I thought that was the end of our conversation.
But just as I reached the bedroom door, she spoke.
“Victor?”
I turned around.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think my father ever thought about me?”
I looked at the photograph in her hands.
“I don’t know, Emily.”
She nodded.
Then she said something very quietly.
“I hope he did.”
I left shortly afterward.
I didn’t know what else to say.
But the next morning, Emily called me.
She sounded different.
She said someone had come to her mother’s house.
A woman.
She was holding a photograph of Richard Carter.
And she had asked for Emily by name.
The woman introduced herself as Margaret.
Then she said six words that Emily couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Your father never stopped asking about you.”
And for the first time in thirty years, Emily wondered if the story she’d been told about her father was wrong.
But Margaret hadn’t come alone.
She had brought something with her.
Something Emily’s mother had kept hidden for almost three decades.
And when Emily saw what was inside that package, she finally understood why Margaret had waited so long to find her.
To be continued…
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