The words do their own work—a simple statement of fact that cuts cleaner than any accusation.
She came back. I didn’t.
Not until today. Not until a woman I’ve been ignoring for five years forced the information past my defenses in a feed store.
“I should have been here,” I say.
“Yeah.”
No softening. No grace this time.
Just the truth, flat and hard, from a man who’s lost his daughter and his health and doesn’t have time to pretend things are okay when they’re not. “You should have been.”
I take it. Absorb it.
Let it settle into the same place where all the other failures live—the drawer I keep locked and full.
I should have driven her.
I should have answered the calls.
I should have been here.
The ring on my finger catches the light.
Earl glances at it.
Something moves across his face—not pain exactly.
Recognition.
The gold band his daughter wore a match to. The ring that means his child existed, that she was loved, that someone is still carrying the proof of her on his body.
“You still wear it,” he says.
“Yeah.”
He nods.
Doesn’t say whether he thinks I should or shouldn’t.
Just nods, the way a man does when he sees something he understands too well to comment on.
We sit in the quiet, and the hammer rings from the barn, and the afternoon opens up around us like a held breath finally releasing.
After a while, Earl tells me old stories about Rose.
Not the big things—I know the big things.
I was there for the big things.
He tells me the small ones.
The pieces only a father carries.
The stories that don’t make it into eulogies because they’re too ordinary, too specific, too alive.
“Did she ever tell you about the chicken?” he asks.
