The words felt like a physical weight in my chest. “My real dad.”
I looked at my five-year-old daughter, Lily. She was coloring, her tongue poking out in concentration, completely unaware that she had just detonated a nuclear bomb in the middle of our living room. I’ve been there for every scraped knee, every nightmare, and every birthday. I am the only father she has ever known.
“Your… real dad?” I managed to choke out.
“Yeah!” she chirped, not looking up. “He comes over when you’re at work. He brings me chocolate. He’s really nice, Daddy.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. My mind immediately went to the worst-case scenario. My wife, Sarah, and I had been married for six years. We had our ups and downs, but I never—not in a million years—thought she was capable of bringing another man into our home, let alone around our daughter.
“Maybe you mixed something up, sweetie,” I said, my voice trembling. “Maybe it’s a friend of Mommy’s? Or the mailman?”
“NO!” Lily dropped her crayon, her eyes wide and insistent. “He comes all the time. Mommy makes dinner for him, and he told me he’s my real daddy! He said you’re just ‘holding the spot’ for him.”
The betrayal tasted like copper in my mouth. I spent the next three days in a trance. I watched Sarah. I looked for signs—a hidden phone, a nervous glance, a scent of cologne that wasn’t mine. But she was perfect. She kissed me when I got home; she talked about our future. The duplicity made me feel physically ill.
I didn’t confront her. Not yet. I wanted to see him. I wanted to see the man who was stealing my life while I was out earning the money to pay for the roof over his head.
“Hey, Lily,” I whispered to her on Friday night while Sarah was in the shower. “Wanna play a game? Invite your ‘real dad’ to Father’s Day dinner on Sunday. But here’s the secret part: don’t tell Mommy. And don’t tell him I’ll be home. Tell him I’m working a double shift. It’ll be our little secret.”
Lily beamed. “A surprise!”
Sunday was a slow-motion nightmare. Sarah made a beautiful brunch. She gave me a “World’s Best Dad” mug. I sat there with a fake smile plastered on my face, feeling like an actor in a play that was about to end in a tragedy. Every time she touched my hand, I wanted to pull away.
By 5:30 p.m., the tension was a physical cord tightening around my throat. I told Sarah I had to run to the office for an hour to finish some paperwork. Instead, I drove around the block, parked three streets away, and crept back to the house through the woods in the backyard.
I entered through the basement door and waited. I had a heavy maglite in my hand. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew I wasn’t going to let him walk out of that house.
At 6:07 p.m., there was a knock at the door.
I heard Sarah’s footsteps. I heard the door creak open. I expected a scream, or a whispered “What are you doing here?”
Instead, there was silence. Then, Sarah’s voice, sounding confused: “Oh! Can I help you?”
I didn’t wait. I burst out of the basement stairs, sprinting through the kitchen and into the foyer. “Stay away from her!” I roared, swinging the heavy flashlight upward.
I stopped dead.
Standing in the doorway was an old man. He was in his late sixties, wearing a tattered suit that looked like it had been pulled from a dumpster. His skin was pale, almost grey, and his eyes were milky with cataracts. He held a crumpled bag of Hershey’s Kisses in one trembling hand.
“I’m here for dinner,” the man whispered. “Lily invited me.”
Sarah backed away, clutching her throat. “Mark, who is this? What is happening?”
I looked at the man, then at my daughter, who was standing at the top of the stairs with a triumphant grin. “See, Daddy? I told you he was real!”
The man stepped into the light, and I felt a coldness crawl up my spine that had nothing to do with infidelity. He didn’t look like a lover. He looked like a ghost.
“I used to live here,” the man said, his voice whistling through his teeth. “Forty years ago. My Sarah… my little girl… she looked just like her.” He pointed a bony finger at my daughter.
I realized then that my daughter hadn’t been describing a secret affair. She had been describing a man who had been dead for decades. I looked at the “chocolate” he was holding. The bag was yellowed, the candy inside turned white with age—bloomed and dusty.
“He’s my real daddy,” Lily repeated from the stairs, her voice suddenly flat and melodic. “He says he’s coming back to stay now. He says the house remembers him.”
I looked back at the door. The man wasn’t there anymore. Only the bag of old, ruined chocolate sat on the welcome mat. Sarah began to scream, but I couldn’t move. I looked at Lily, and for the first time, I didn’t recognize my own daughter. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the empty space right beside me, and she was smiling.
“Sit down, Daddy,” Lily said, her eyes turning a shade of grey I’d never seen before. “Dinner is served.”
