Chapter 6 — Hello, Dad

So I did not hesitate.

I looked at this lonely dying man who wanted, before the end, to know the feeling of having a daughter, and I gave it to him with my whole heart.

“Well then,” I said, and I made myself smile through the ache in my throat, “hello, Dad.”

Julian laughed.

It was the first real laugh I had ever heard from him, a startled, delighted, wondering sound that seemed to come up from somewhere very deep and very long buried, as though he could not quite believe the word had actually been spoken to him, as though he had waited so long to hear it that he had stopped believing he ever would.

His whole face changed with it, years falling away, the gray patient sorrow lifting for a moment into something that was almost young.