I woke whenever his breathing changed.
I learned the different sounds of the monitors.
I memorized every beep.
On the last night, the doctor asked me to step into the hallway.
“It may only be a few hours, Rosalie.”
I nodded.
I couldn’t speak.
When I returned to the room, Frank appeared to be asleep.
I sat beside him and slipped my hand beneath his.
His fingers suddenly closed tightly around my wrist.
I froze.
“Promise you’ll hear me out before you hate me,” he whispered.
I stared at him.
“I could never hate you.”
“Promise.”
His hand felt cold against my skin.
Then he said the words that would stay with me forever.
“I’ve lied to you your entire life.”
I forced a smile.
“Dad, you’re exhausted. Let me get the nurse.”
“My mind is clear.”
His grip tightened.
“Everything you believe about your childhood, about who I am… is incomplete.”
My heart began pounding.
“What are you talking about?”
“I need you to discover the truth before I die.”
He swallowed.
“Even though I was begged to take it to my grave.”
Suddenly, a thousand questions crowded my mind.
Was my biological father alive?
Had Frank hidden letters from me?
Had there been another family?
Another marriage?
Another version of the man I thought I knew?
Frank reached beneath the blanket with trembling fingers and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
He placed it in my palm.
“Go there.”
I looked at the address.
“Now.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“You have to.”
Tears slid into the gray stubble along his jaw.
“Please, Rosalie.”
He hadn’t called me Rosalie like that since I was a child.
I bent closer.
“Tell me yourself.”
His eyes closed.
“Some truths need another voice.”
Those were the last words he ever said to me.
A few minutes later, the monitor began chirping.
A nurse hurried into the room.
She checked his pulse and adjusted his oxygen.
“He is still with us,” she said softly.
“But he may not wake again.”
I stood in the hallway and unfolded the paper.
An address was written in Frank’s shaky handwriting.
The house was less than 20 minutes from the home where he had raised me.
I stared at it.
For a moment, I almost threw it away.
Whatever was waiting at that address couldn’t possibly matter more than the man dying behind me.
Then I remembered the look in Frank’s eyes.
It wasn’t fear of death.
It was fear that I would never understand him.
So I went.
The streets were nearly empty as I drove.
I gripped the steering wheel so tightly my fingers began to ache.
During the drive, my mind created one betrayal after another.
A secret wife.
A secret child.
A person who would tell me Frank had never wanted me.
Someone who knew a version of him I had never seen.
By the time I reached the address, I was almost afraid to knock.
An elderly woman opened the door.
She had silver hair, pale blue eyes, and one hand pressed against her mouth.
She stared at me as though she’d been waiting for a ghost.
“Rosalie,” she whispered.
I took a step back.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Caroline.”
“How do you know me?”
She looked toward the dark street behind me.
“Frank called last month. He could barely speak.”
She paused.
“He said you might come one day.”
“Might?”
“He hoped he would find the courage to send you.”
I didn’t understand.
She opened the door wider.
“I think you should come inside.”
Every instinct told me to return to the hospital.
Instead, I stepped through the doorway.
“Tell me what Frank lied about.”
Caroline didn’t answer.
Instead, she walked into the kitchen and opened a drawer beside the stove.
Inside was a collection of old metal cookie cutters.
Hearts.
Flowers.
Animals.
Apples.
And one small star.
I stopped breathing.
I knew that cutter.
It was identical to the one Frank had used every Sunday of my childhood.
“Where did you get that?”
Caroline carefully lifted it.
“It belonged to Frank.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“His is at my house.”
“He had two, dear.”
Beneath the cutters was a photograph.
Caroline picked it up and handed it to me.
A little girl stood beside a kitchen table.
In front of her was a plate of star-shaped apple pancakes.
She looked about five years old.
Behind her stood a much younger Frank.
He was thinner.
His hair was darker.
And he was smiling in a way I had never seen before.
“Who is she?”
Caroline’s voice trembled.
“Her name was Miley.”
The room seemed to shrink around me.
“Who is Miley?”
“Frank was married before he met your mother.”
She looked down at the photograph.
“Miley was his daughter.”
I gripped the picture.
“Where is she?”
Caroline lowered her eyes.
“She died when she was five.”
The words were quiet.
But they hit me like a physical blow.
“There was an accident at a lake,” Caroline continued. “It happened quickly. Frank blamed himself, even though there was nothing he could have done.”
I sat down.
My legs could no longer hold me.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“After Miley died, his marriage collapsed.”
Caroline sat across from me.
“He stopped speaking to people. He stopped answering my calls. We were best friends, but he shut everyone out.”
She touched the photograph.
“He packed away every picture, every toy, every reminder that he had ever been a father.”
My eyes returned to the little star cutter.
“The pancakes.”
Caroline nodded.
“He made them for Miley.”
Then she told me something I had never known.
“One morning, after he married your mother, you climbed into his lap and fell asleep against his chest.”
I frowned.
“When you woke up, you asked him if he knew how to make pancakes shaped like stars.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You were four.”
She placed the cutter on the table.
“He called me that afternoon. He was crying so hard I could barely understand him.”
I stared at her.
