Harlan came into my life when I was still small enough to believe adults disappeared whenever they wanted to.
My biological father had left before I could remember his face. Then my mother married Harlan, and for a few short months, I had something that felt almost like a normal family.
I didn’t make it easy for him.
At first, I refused to call him Dad.
If he asked whether I wanted milk, I nodded.
If he offered to tie my shoes, I pulled my feet away.
At bedtime, I let my mother kiss my forehead, but when Harlan appeared in the doorway, I turned my face toward the wall.
He never complained.
He simply stayed.
He learned that I hated crusts on toast and loved cinnamon in my oatmeal. He discovered that I was afraid of thunderstorms but too stubborn to admit it, so on stormy nights he sat in the hallway outside my bedroom with a book.
And every Sunday morning, he made apple pancakes.
Not ordinary ones.
He had an old metal cutter shaped like a little moon, and he would press it into the batter while I sat at the kitchen table waiting.
The edges always came out too dark.
I loved them anyway.
A few months after the wedding, I walked into the kitchen half asleep and said, “Dad, mine has too much cinnamon.”
Harlan froze with the spatula in his hand.
I froze too.
Neither of us mentioned what I had called him.
He just scraped the darkest pancake onto his own plate and gave me the best one.
Five months later, my mother died.
It happened so suddenly that one evening she was complaining about a headache, and the next morning I was surrounded by adults speaking in low voices.
I remember almost nothing about the funeral.
What I do remember is hearing my aunt whisper in the kitchen.
“Harlan is still young. He’ll move on eventually.”
Someone answered, “He’s not Elodie’s real father. We need to decide what happens to her.”
That night, I crawled beneath the dining table and stayed there until long after everyone had gone to bed.
Harlan found me around dawn.
He sat on the floor across from me.
“Are you leaving too?” I asked.
His face changed.
