Gina Heslop
One night, while getting ready for bed, Alice received an unexpected phone call from an unknown number.
Ignoring it at first, she was soon startled by a message that followed: “ALICE, THIS IS YOUR DAD. PLEASE CALL, I AM IN THE HOSPITAL.” The message froze her. Her father had disappeared 20 years ago, leaving her and her mother behind without any explanation.
She had no contact with him all those years, and now, out of nowhere, he was reaching out from his deathbed. Torn between anger and curiosity, Alice decided to call him back.
When her father answered, his voice was weak. He didn’t have much time left and needed to tell Alice something important. He began to explain why he left all those years ago, revealing a secret that shattered everything Alice thought she knew. According to him, her grandfather, Harold, had paid him to disappear from their lives.
Her grandfather despised him, seeing him as a failure and not good enough for Alice’s mother. At the time, Alice’s father was struggling with addiction and bad decisions, and Harold used the opportunity to remove him from the picture. In exchange for money, Alice’s father agreed to leave and not return.
Anger surged through Alice. “So you just left us for money?” she asked. Her father admitted it sounded terrible but insisted that he had taken the money to build a future for her. He used the funds to invest and build a business, believing that he was securing her future in a way he couldn’t have otherwise.
However, the deal came with conditions: he couldn’t contact Alice or her mother. But he claimed he had been watching from a distance. He had been present at her school events, her volleyball games, and even her graduation, though he never approached her.
This revelation shook Alice to her core. Her entire childhood had been filled with questions, and now, on his deathbed, her father was giving her answers. But it didn’t erase the pain or the years of absence. She asked him why her mother had never told her the truth, but her father had no clear answer.
As the conversation continued, her father expressed his dying wish—to see Alice one last time. He was at St. Mary’s Hospital, and he begged her to come. Confused and emotional, Alice hung up the phone, unsure of what to do. She talked to her best friend, Jen, who advised her to seek closure and perhaps get the answers she had long been denied.
The next morning, Alice decided to visit her father. As she drove to the hospital, memories of her childhood flashed in her mind—the good times before he left and the heartache that followed his departure. When she entered his hospital room, she saw him lying there, frail and vulnerable. Despite her anger, seeing him in such a weakened state made it difficult to express her feelings.
Her father apologized, explaining that he thought disappearing was the best way to give Alice and her mother a better life. He revealed that he had written her letters every year, but never sent them. They were all stored in a safety deposit box, and he handed her a key to access them after he was gone. He hoped the letters would help her understand everything.
In that moment, Alice was left to grapple with the complexity of her father’s choices and the pain of his absence. Though the answers didn’t erase the hurt, she realized that she needed to find her own path to forgiveness and healing.
