He finally handed me the letter. It was written on lined paper in the same careful handwriting I had studied for years. Elliot, I’ve been sending these from Riverside Correctional Facility since you were three. I earned forty cents an hour in the prison laundry. Every birthday, I saved what I could. My sister mailed them for me so you’d never see the return address.
My hands started shaking. I knew that name at the bottom before I reached it. Darren. Elliot’s father. I flipped to the back of the page, where one last line was written in darker ink, as if he had pressed hard with the pen. I was released on Monday. I’m parked across the street in a blue truck. If you don’t come out, I’ll understand.
I went to the window. Elliot stood beside me, completely silent. A gray-haired man stood beside an old blue pickup, holding a small white bakery box with both hands. He looked nothing like the reckless twenty-two-year-old who walked out on us. The letter explained the rest. Months after he left, Darren drove drunk and hit another car. A woman was badly hurt. He pleaded guilty and served sixteen years.
He wrote that he got sober inside and spent years believing he had no right to contact a son he had abandoned. The cards were the only thing he allowed himself. He never signed them because he didn’t want Elliot hoping for a father who couldn’t show up. He also wrote that the woman he hurt had forgiven him years ago, and that he would spend the rest of his life earning it. Now he was out, working at a lumberyard, and he wanted Elliot to decide whether to meet him.
Elliot looked at me for permission. I told him the choice was his. He walked out the front door slowly. I watched from the window as Darren straightened up and held out the bakery box. Inside was a small chocolate cake with nineteen candles. They stood on the sidewalk for almost an hour. I didn’t hear what they said, and I didn’t need to. When Elliot came back inside, his eyes were red, but he was smiling.
They meet for breakfast every Sunday now. Darren never asks for anything, and he still apologizes more than he needs to. Last month, Elliot brought a shoebox to the diner, full of every card he had ever received, all seventeen of them. Darren cried when he saw them. Then Elliot handed him a pen and asked him to finally sign every single one. He signed each one, Dad.
