Part 2
The knock on my bedroom door came just after 11 a.m. the day before the championship.
By the time Marcus was 13, I’d finally managed to move us into a two-bedroom apartment.
“Dad, are you up?”
I sat against the headboard and switched on the lamp.
“Yeah, buddy. Come in.”
Marcus sat at the foot of my bed, exactly the way he used to when he was 11 and thunderstorms kept him awake.
He was 18 now.
Six-foot-two.
Still my kid.
“I’ve gotta tell you something. And I need you to hear me out before you say anything.”
My stomach tightened.
“Okay.”
He took a breath.
“I invited Danny to the championship tomorrow.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
Danny’s name hadn’t been said in our home in probably a decade.
Hearing Marcus say it felt like somebody had suddenly switched on a light in a room I’d kept dark for years.
“He found me on Instagram three months ago,” Marcus explained quickly. “He kept messaging me. Stuff like, ‘I want to make it right, son.’ And, ‘Let me be there for the big moments.’ He says he’s changed. He’s married now to a woman named Cheryl. He got rich in commercial real estate.”
“Three months?”
My voice came out sharper than I intended.
“You’ve been talking to him for three months and didn’t tell me?”
Marcus looked down at the quilt.
“I kept trying. Every time I was going to say something at dinner, I chickened out. Then I figured if I waited any longer, you’d hear it from someone else, and that would be worse.”
I rubbed a hand across my face.
“What were you scared of?”
“That you’d think I was choosing him.”
The clock beside the bed read 11:14 a.m.
Puck drop was less than 18 hours away.
“Marcus, do you know what time he called me the night your mom died?”
“Dad.”
“Two in the morning. And when I got there, you were the only one left in that house.”
“I know the story.”
“Then you know what kind of man walks out on a four-year-old.”
Marcus finally looked at me.
His eyes were wet, but his jaw was set.
That was what got me.
He wasn’t backing down.
“Dad, please try to understand. I’m not asking you to like him. I’m asking you to trust me.”
Every part of me wanted to forbid it.
I wanted to tell Marcus that Danny didn’t get to disappear for 14 years and then show up at one of the most important moments of his son’s life pretending to be a father.
The words were already on my tongue.
Then I looked at Marcus sitting there.
I saw the same little boy I’d taught to tie his shoes on our kitchen floor.
And I knew that if I tried to control this decision, I might damage something between us that I could never repair.
“Okay,” I said.
He blinked.
“Okay?”
“You invited him. He’s coming. I’m not gonna make a scene.”
“Thank you.”
Marcus stood, then stopped at the doorway.
“Dad. I love you.”
“Love you too, kid. Get some sleep.”
He closed the door.
I stayed there beneath the lamplight for hours.
I didn’t sleep at all.
Instead, my mind replayed 14 years.
The emergency room visit when Marcus was six and split his chin open on the coffee table.
The science fair volcano that ruined our oven.
Every birthday.
Every Christmas.
Every parent-teacher conference where I sat alone in one of those tiny plastic chairs.
Around 5 a.m., I finally got out of bed and walked into the living room.
On the bookshelf sat a framed photograph of Marcus at five years old.
Gap-toothed.
Grinning.
Holding a plastic hockey stick almost as tall as he was.
I picked up the frame with both hands.
In a few hours, the man who had walked away from that little boy would walk back into his life.
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