Chapter 2 - The House With the Sketches on the WallTwenty minutes later I was sitting in Renata's car, neither of us saying much of anything. When she pulled up outside a small brick house, my hands had started shaking without my permission.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I admitted.
"Neither do I, honestly."
Renata knocked. Footsteps approached. The door opened, and a man stood there in glasses and an old gray T-shirt.
He looked at Renata first. Then at me. His whole expression shifted, and he pushed his glasses up with one finger — exactly, unmistakably, the way Dad always did.
"Mom?"
"Julian," Renata said, barely above a whisper, "this is Claire."
Shock filled his eyes. Dad's eyes. Not identical, but close enough that my stomach twisted looking at them.
"She knows?" he asked his mother.
"I told her."
He looked at me. "I'm sorry."
I hated that he was apologizing to me. "You knew about me?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Ten years."
"And you never once reached out?"
"Dad asked me not to."
Hearing him say Dad did something strange and painful in my chest.
"Why?" I asked.
Julian hesitated. "He said it would hurt you."
My voice dropped low. "He actually told you that?"
"He said you and your mom had a good life. That him showing up would tear it apart."
"And you just believed that?"
"I believed my father."
Those four words hit harder than I expected them to.
I stepped inside. The house was small, but the first thing I noticed was a wall covered almost entirely in architectural sketches — floor plans, building facades, measurements scrawled in the margins. Two distinct sets of handwriting. I recognized one of them instantly.
Julian noticed where I was staring. "He taught me."
I moved closer, then noticed a row of photographs on a nearby shelf. Dad holding a birthday cake. Dad standing beside a half-restored motorcycle. Dad sitting across a cheap diner table from Julian, both of them laughing. Dad wearing the exact canvas jacket he always wore on his way out the door on Thursday nights.
For ten years of Thursdays, my father hadn't been bowling.
He'd been here. With his son.
I picked up the motorcycle photo. "You built this together?"
"Took forever," Julian said quietly.
Another photo showed Dad in a folding chair at what looked like a graduation. "Community college," Julian explained. "He never missed one."
There were more — Dad and Julian painting an apartment together, eating takeout cross-legged on bare floorboards, laughing at something out of frame.
Then I found the one that finished off whatever denial I had left. Dad and Julian standing behind a heavy wooden workbench, both of them grinning at the camera.
Dad looked happy. Not trapped. Not guilty, not uncomfortable.
Happy.
"How long did the workbench take?" I asked.
"About four months. Mostly Thursdays."
I touched the edge of the photo. "He built me a desk when I was twelve."
Julian smiled, sad around the edges. "That sounds exactly like him."
I almost cried right there. Instead I asked the only question that actually mattered. "Why didn't he ever tell us?"
Julian's smile disappeared. "He was going to."
Renata turned toward him sharply. "Julian."
"What?"
"You never told me that."
He looked between the two of us. "Six months ago he said he was done hiding it."
My heart started pounding. "When was he going to tell us?"
"Next month. He'd already picked out a Sunday — one where he knew you and your mom would both be home."
Julian disappeared into another room and came back holding two sealed envelopes. One read Linda. The other read Claire.
Dad's handwriting.
"He wrote these?"
"Three weeks ago. He said he was scared he'd lose his nerve otherwise."
I slid both envelopes into my bag. "We're going back to the hospital."
"I don't know if that's a good idea," Renata said.
"Neither was ten years of lying."
May you like
She started to object again. I just shook my head. "If my father's lying in that hospital bed, both of his kids deserve to be standing next to him."
Julian grabbed his jacket without another word.
