Then, when I was six, she told me Daddy wasn’t coming home. The accident, she said. Nothing more. At twenty, searching through old photo albums in the attic, I found a letter tucked behind a picture of my dad holding me as a newborn. It was dated the day before he died. In it, he wrote about leaving work early to surprise me. We were going to make pancakes for dinner—extra chocolate chips. He didn’t want to miss another minute with me.

I realized then he hadn’t simply been driving home. He had been rushing home to me. When I confronted Meredith, she admitted the truth. She hadn’t told me because she feared I would grow up believing he died because of me.
“He died loving you,” she said. “That’s different.”
And she was right. The truth wasn’t about guilt.
It was about love.