then my father, who had spent his whole life shrinking behind whatever my mother chose, did something different.
He looked up from the porch boards.
He looked directly at me.
His eyes were wet.
This time, he didn’t look away.
“Fiona,” he said.
His voice cracked.
“I should have.”
Then he stopped.
The sentence remained unfinished in the summer air.
I should have.
The rest was apparently too heavy for him after sixty-three years of lifting nothing.
For one second, I saw the whole sad shape of my father.
A
