My mom was running errands, so I showed it to Gypsy.
“Junk mail,”she said in a funny voice, taking it from me.“Let’s just keep this between us. You know how your mom is.”
“My dad’s name starts with N,”I said to her.
“So it does,”she said without looking at me.
I thought about it a while. I wondered why she didn’t say, “But he died,” the way my mom always did when I asked about him.
The next one came on my mom’s birthday in February. It said the exact same thing. Instead of giving it to Gypsy, I kept it.
When the last one came a couple of weeks ago, it said something different; I gave it to Gypsy. She was in her office just getting off the phone and had a sad look on her face.
“What’s wrong, Gypsy?”I asked.
She sniffed and wiped her eyes.“An old friend of mine is sick, that’s all.”
“Who is it?”I asked.
“Just a man I used to know.”
I handed her the postcard and she looked worried when she read it.
“Is it my dad?”I asked.
Gypsy sat down.“Why do you think that?”
“Because he’s been gone eight years like the note says,”I told her.“But what does it mean?”
Gypsy looked at me like she didn’t know how to answer.“It means we’re running out of time, Stickybeak,”she finally said.“You keep this between us. I’ll take care of it.”
“Is he alive?”I asked.
She hesitated.“He is.”
I got so mad. My mom told me my whole life that he died before I was born. She never even showed me a picture of him!
“My mom lied to me,”I said, angry.“Why?”
“She was scared,”Gypsy said.“People don’t always know how to be brave when they’rescared.”She explained it was kind of like why she didn’t tell anyone about her brain tumor.“Don’t be mad at her.”
I wasn’t sure how to do that, but I promised I’d try.
My mom came into the store right after that and she and Gypsy got into an argument. My mom was mad about my dad, money, and Gypsy being sick. Then Gypsy told my mom she had a secret dad, just like me. When I heard her on the phone that night with her sisters, worried about me, I knew what I had to do: I had to be brave, just like Gypsy said. I had to force her togo even though it was scary for her to leave. She looked sad and I wanted to cry, but we were running out of time.
I like Jonathan. Sometimes, he makes me macaroni and cheese, but a girl at school once told me that her dad knows how to fix everything. Boo-boos and bad dreams and broken bicycles. I knew if my mom could go find my dad and hers, there would be nothing to worry about. We could fix the money and Gypsy’s brain.
And now here he is, wearing a silly shirt like my mom told me he liked to do.
He’s on his knees and crying, and it makes my throat and eyes burn; I’m crying too.
“Bennie,” my mom says. “This is?—”
“I know who he is,” I say, looking at the pizzas on his shirt and the color brown of his eyes. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, Bennie,” he says.
I wrap my arms around his neck, and he wraps his arms around me.
