“No.”
“Everybody leaves.”
“I’m not everybody.”
I didn’t believe him.
So he held out his little finger.
“I promise.”
I wrapped mine around it.
For the next thirty-four years, Harlan kept that promise.
He packed my lunches.
He sat through terrible school plays.
He taught me to drive in a parking lot and somehow survived it.
When I got married, he walked me down the aisle with tears running openly down his face.
When my daughter was born, he arrived at the hospital with flowers, three stuffed animals, and a car seat safety manual he had printed from the internet.
He was never my stepfather in any way that mattered.
He was simply Dad.
That was why, when his health began to fail at seventy-nine, I rearranged my entire life around him.
The doctors stopped using hopeful words during his final week.
I slept in a chair beside his hospital bed, waking every time his breathing changed.
One evening, a doctor gently asked me to step into the hallway.
“It may be tonight,” she said.
I stared at her.
“You mean…”
“Hours, possibly.”
When I returned to the room, Harlan’s eyes were closed.
I sat beside him and took his hand.
For several minutes, nothing happened.
Then his fingers suddenly tightened around my wrist.
“Elodie.”
I leaned forward.
“I’m here.”
His eyes opened.
There was fear in them.
