Frank married my mother when I was four years old.
At first, I refused to call him anything.
Not Frank.
Not Dad.
Nothing.
When he asked whether I wanted toast, I pointed at the bread.
When he offered to read me a bedtime story, I pulled the blanket over my head.
At first, I refused to call him anything.
My biological father had disappeared before I could form a memory of him, and even at four, I understood enough to distrust men who arrived carrying suitcases.
Frank never pushed.
He learned that I liked strawberry jam spread all the way to the crust.
He sat outside my bedroom during thunderstorms because I would not let him come inside.
Every Sunday, he made apple pancakes and pressed the batter into stars with an old metal cutter.
Frank never pushed.
One morning, nearly three months after he married my mother, I wandered into the kitchen and called him Dad without thinking.
He dropped the spatula.
Neither of us mentioned it.
He simply placed the least-burned pancake on my plate.
I wandered into the kitchen and called him Dad without thinking.
My mother died five months later.
A brain aneurysm took her so quickly that the last conversation I remembered having with her was about whether I had put my shoes away.
The house was filled with relatives.
They whispered in hallways and looked at Frank when they thought I was not watching.
My mother died five months later.
“He isn’t her real father.”
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