They were my father\u2019s letters. After the wedding, he wrote me every month, and I tossed each one into that box unopened because I couldn\u2019t bring myself to burn them. In February, Hannah found it while looking for her old ice skates. She saw the return address, read the first letter, and learned she had a grandfather. Then she read all one hundred and eighty of them.<\/p>\n
I sat on his porch swing and opened the first one. On the morning of my wedding, my father\u2019s truck was hit by a delivery van at the corner of Chestnut and Sixth, four blocks from the church. He spent eleven days unconscious and four months learning to walk again. That\u2019s why there was a ramp. He had called from the hospital twice. Both times, I hung up before he could say a word.<\/p>\n
My father finally came out with a small white envelope. Inside was the hospital bracelet from that day, still cut where the nurse had snipped it off, and a boutonniere, brown and crumbled, that had been in his jacket pocket during the crash. \u201cI kept trying to get to you,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry I couldn\u2019t.\u201d I had spent fifteen years believing he chose not to come. He had been trying to crawl there.<\/p>\n
Hannah told me she hadn\u2019t lied to hurt me. She was afraid that if she asked, I would say no before she could meet him. Now she doesn\u2019t have to sneak through a side door. Every Thursday at 5:15, I drive her to Sixth Street myself, and I stay. My father teaches her chess at the kitchen table while I make dinner in the house I grew up in. Last month, Mrs. Callahan stopped me in the grocery store again. I told her Hannah was busy on Thursdays now, with family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They were my father\u2019s letters. After the wedding, he wrote me every month, and I tossed each one into that box unopened because I couldn\u2019t bring myself… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n