Lucinda didn't sleep that night. She sat on the old floral-patterned couch in the living room, the same one she and Lucas had used to build pillow forts when they were little, while the clock ticked too loudly and shadows crept along the walls. Her father had gone to a hotel after the tense reunion—at her mother's unspoken insistence.
Now, dawn was bleeding into the sky, pale and sleepy. Lucinda sipped cold tea, her hands wrapped around the chipped mug.
She didn't cry. She couldn't. The tears hadn't come—not yet.
Her mind was crowded with memories she didn't ask for: birthday mornings he never showed up for, the letter she once wrote and burned, the day she got her first period and had to walk to the pharmacy alone because her mother was at work.
He had missed it all.
Still… she couldn't ignore the flicker in her chest—the ache of something she thought she'd buried for good.
By noon, her father returned.
He didn't knock.
He just stood at the gate, uncertain, holding a small brown envelope in his hand and wearing a pressed white shirt tucked into khaki pants—his version of "respectable." The expensive car sat idling behind him like a statement.
Lucinda stepped outside before her mother could.
"I just want to talk," he said, voice rough like gravel.
"Then talk," Lucinda replied, arms folded across her chest.
He handed her the envelope. Inside were copies of letters—handwritten and dated, yellowed at the edges.
"I wrote every month. After I left," he said. "Your mother never gave them to you. I asked her to. I begged."
Lucinda blinked down at the familiar curves of his handwriting, her stomach twisting.
"Why would she hide this?"
"Ask her," he said simply.
She did.
That evening, while Lucas napped and the house was quiet again, Lucinda asked.
Her mother looked tired. Too tired to lie.
"I was angry," she whispered. "I didn't want him poisoning your mind with hope. I didn't want him confusing you or Lucas."
Lucinda didn't scream. She didn't even raise her voice. She just nodded and left the room.
Everything was a lie. Or maybe, everything was only partly true. And it was up to her now to sort the puzzle pieces into something that made sense.
Over the next two days, Lucinda and her father met quietly in the backyard under the neem tree, where the air smelled like old earth and the past. They spoke in fragments at first—safe things.
"Do you still like mangoes?"
"Remember the time you rode Lucas's bike and crashed into the chicken coop?"
"Your laugh hasn't changed."
She didn't know how to feel. He had disappeared. He had left them when they needed him most. But he was here now—trying.
And there was a difference between trying and pretending. Lucinda saw it in his eyes, in the way his hand trembled when he showed her a photo of them at the beach when she was four. In the way he lingered after every sentence, like he didn't want to leave another word unsaid.
"I was weak, Lucy," he said on the second evening, voice hoarse. "I was selfish. I thought I could fix myself if I left. But I only broke more things."
She swallowed hard. "You broke me."
He nodded slowly. "I know."
There was a pause. The kind that hangs like fog. But then he whispered something she never expected.
"Can I meet Lucas?"
Lucinda hesitated. Then nodded.
That night, as she stood in the doorway of her brother's room, watching the man who abandoned them now kneeling beside his son's wheelchair with tears in his eyes, she felt something crack open in her heart.
Not forgiveness. Not yet. But something close. Possibility.