I had never considered that they might also be hiding something.
Frank’s health began to decline not long after his 78th birthday.
First, he became unusually tired.
Then he began losing weight.
After that came medical tests, specialists, and those cautiously worded explanations doctors give when they already know how the story will end.
During his final week, I slept in a vinyl chair beside his hospital bed.
Any change in his breathing woke me.
I learned every sound made by the machines surrounding him.
On his final night, the doctor asked me to step into the hallway.
“It may only be a few hours, Rosalie.”
I nodded because I knew that if I tried to speak, I would fall apart.
When I returned to the room, Frank seemed to be sleeping.
I lowered myself into the chair and slipped my hand beneath his.
Without warning, his fingers tightened around my wrist.
Hard.
“Promise you’ll hear me out before you hate me,” he suddenly said.
I froze.
“I could never hate you.”
His hand was cold against mine.
“I’ve lied to you your entire life.”
I tried to smile. “Dad, you’re exhausted. Let me get the nurse.”
“My mind is clear.” He tightened his grip. “Everything you believe about your childhood, about who I am… is incomplete.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
“What are you talking about?”
“I need you to discover the truth before I die, even though I was begged to take it to my grave.”
Questions rushed through my head faster than I could process them.
Was my biological father still alive?
Had Frank kept letters from me?
Had there been another family?
Was there an entire part of his life I had never known existed?
With trembling fingers, Frank reached beneath the blanket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
He pushed it into my hand.
“Go there. Now.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“You have to.” Tears disappeared into the gray stubble on his jaw. “Please, Rosalie.”
He had not called me Rosalie in that tone since I was little.
I leaned closer over the bed.
“Tell me yourself.”
Frank closed his eyes.
“Some truths need another voice.”
Those became the last words he ever spoke to me.
A nurse entered when the monitor started chirping.
She checked his pulse before adjusting the oxygen.
“He is still with us,” she said. “But he may not wake again.
I stepped into the hallway and unfolded the paper.
Frank’s shaky handwriting filled the center with a single address.
It was less than twenty minutes from the house where he had raised me.
For a moment, I considered throwing it away.
Whatever existed at that address could not possibly matter more than the man dying in the room behind me.
Then I remembered the look in his eyes.
It had not been fear of dying.
It had been fear that I would never understand him.
I drove through nearly deserted streets with both hands locked around the steering wheel.
By the time I arrived, I had imagined almost every kind of betrayal.
A hidden wife.
A stranger waiting to tell me Frank had never actually wanted me.
An elderly woman answered the door.
Her hair was silver, her eyes a pale blue, and one hand immediately covered her mouth when she saw me.
She stared as if someone from the dead had appeared on her doorstep.
“Rosalie,” she whispered.
I gasped sharply enough to make her step backward.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Caroline.”
“How do you know me?”
She glanced past me toward the dark street.
“Frank called last month. He could barely speak. He said you might come one day.”
“Might?”
“He hoped he would find the courage to send you.”‘
She pulled the door open farther.
“I think you should come inside.”
Everything in me wanted to turn around and race back to the hospital.
But instead, I walked inside.
“Tell me what Frank lied about.”
Caroline remained quiet.
She crossed the kitchen and opened a drawer beside the stove.
Inside was an assortment of metal cookie cutters.
Hearts.
Flowers.
Animals.
Apples.
And one little star.
My breath caught.
It looked exactly like the star Frank had used every Sunday throughout my childhood.
“Where did you get that?”
Caroline picked it up gently.
“It belonged to Frank.”
“No. His is at my house.”
“He had two, dear,” she said.
Beneath the cutters was an old photograph.
Caroline lifted it out and passed it to me.
