His bedroom was untouched — reading glasses on the nightstand, a library book three weeks overdue, his robe still hanging behind the door.

I sat on the edge of his bed and looked at it all.

Dad had always shown up. When I needed my appendix out, he drove forty minutes to sit beside me even after I swore it was only a minor operation. He helped me move, twice.

After one bad breakup he just sat across the kitchen table and listened without offering a word of advice.

And every Tuesday evening for twelve years he called, because Tuesday was the day he called, and I hadn’t understood how much that steady thing meant until it stopped.