The shoes were sitting near the top.<\/p>\n
I noticed their plain black leather first, then the thick soles and the simple shape.<\/p>\n
They weren't the sort of shoes anyone would buy to impress somebody.<\/p>\n
They looked practical.<\/p>\n
Made for work.<\/p>\n
I lifted one out of the box and turned it over in my hands.<\/p>\n
The leather around the ankle was soft, but the rest looked almost new.<\/p>\n
I checked the inside.<\/p>\n
A small size label was still attached beneath the tongue.<\/p>\n
Eleven.<\/p>\n
My size.<\/p>\n
I looked at the shoe again.<\/p>\n
Then I checked the other one, even though I already knew what I would find.<\/p>\n
The same size.<\/p>\n
I sat there holding them, unable to understand why my father would have bought me a pair of work shoes and placed them in a box with the rest of his belongings.<\/p>\n
I looked up at Marcus.<\/p>\n
"What am I supposed to make of these?"<\/p>\n
He kept his hands in his jacket pockets.<\/p>\n
"There's more in there."<\/p>\n
That was all he said.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask whether my father had bought them recently or years ago. I wanted to know if Marcus had been present when the box was packed.<\/p>\n
Most of all, I wanted to know why my father had chosen something so ordinary.<\/p>\n
A letter might have made sense.<\/p>\n
A photograph, perhaps.<\/p>\n
Even an old possession that carried some memory between us.<\/p>\n
But shoes?<\/p>\n
I placed them on the table.<\/p>\n
They looked strangely out of place beside the kitchen chairs and the bowl of keys near the wall.<\/p>\n
I had spent years assuming my father didn't pay much attention to the small details of my life.<\/p>\n
He rarely asked what I needed.<\/p>\n
He didn't often notice when something had changed.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps I had convinced myself that he didn't notice because it was easier than wondering why he never said anything.<\/p>\n
The shoes made that old explanation harder to hold on to.<\/p>\n
He had known my size.<\/p>\n
Exactly.<\/p>\n
That didn't prove he had understood me.<\/p>\n
It didn't prove he had cared in the way I had wanted him to.<\/p>\n
But it meant he had paid attention to something.<\/p>\n
And for reasons I couldn't explain, that bothered me almost as much as it comforted me.<\/p>\n
I picked up one shoe again.<\/p>\n
The sole was clean.<\/p>\n
There were no marks showing that someone had worn it for even a short time.<\/p>\n
My father hadn't packed something he no longer needed.<\/p>\n
He had put something aside for me.<\/p>\n
I remembered him once telling me that a person should take care of the things that helped him earn a living.<\/p>\n
At the time, I had thought he was talking about tools.<\/p>\n
He had been particular about those.<\/p>\n
He kept them in their proper places and became irritated when someone borrowed one without returning it.<\/p>\n
I had assumed that was simply the way he was.<\/p>\n
Practical.<\/p>\n
Unsentimental.<\/p>\n
A man who believed things were useful or they weren't.<\/p>\n
Now I wondered whether there had been more to that attitude than I understood.<\/p>\n
Maybe he had always shown concern through things he could provide.<\/p>\n
Maybe I had spent so long waiting for him to say the right words that I had overlooked everything else.<\/p>\n
Or maybe I was searching for kindness because I wanted this box to contain some proof that I hadn't been forgotten.<\/p>\n
I couldn't decide.<\/p>\n
I put the shoe down.<\/p>\n
Marcus had moved closer to the table, but he still hadn't taken the chair.<\/p>\n
He watched me with an expression I couldn't quite read.<\/p>\n
"You knew about these?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Then why aren't you surprised?"<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a moment.<\/p>\n
"I'm trying not to tell you what to think."<\/p>\n
I almost laughed.<\/p>\n
It wasn't funny, exactly.<\/p>\n
My father had spent so much time deciding what I should know that I had expected Marcus to do the same.<\/p>\n
Instead, he seemed determined to leave me alone with the things inside the box.<\/p>\n
That should have been a relief.<\/p>\n
It wasn't.<\/p>\n
I was used to being given explanations, even when I didn't believe them.<\/p>\n
Being left to work things out for myself felt unfamiliar.<\/p>\n
I turned back to the box.<\/p>\n
Beneath the shoes was an envelope.<\/p>\n
It was plain and slightly yellowed around the edges.<\/p>\n
My name appeared across the front in handwriting I recognized immediately.<\/p>\n
Daniel.<\/p>\n
Not a nickname.<\/p>\n
Not a shortened version.<\/p>\n
My full first name, written carefully in my father's familiar hand.<\/p>\n
I stopped breathing for a second.<\/p>\n
I had seen that handwriting on birthday cards, old notes, and the occasional list he left on the kitchen counter.<\/p>\n
There was something distinctive about the way he formed certain letters.<\/p>\n
Even when he wrote quickly, his words remained firm and deliberate.<\/p>\n
I knew it was his before I finished reading my name.<\/p>\n
I ran my thumb along the edge of the envelope.<\/p>\n
It was sealed.<\/p>\n
I didn't open it.<\/p>\n
Not yet.<\/p>\n
Instead, I stared at the name as if it might change if I looked long enough.<\/p>\n
I couldn't remember the last time my father had written to me like this.<\/p>\n
He usually spoke when he needed to tell me something.<\/p>\n
If he wanted me to do a job, he told me what needed doing.<\/p>\n
If he had a question, he asked it.<\/p>\n
He wasn't someone who left personal letters lying around.<\/p>\n
At least, that was what I had believed.<\/p>\n
I turned the envelope over.<\/p>\n
There was nothing else on the back that I could see from where I sat.<\/p>\n
No date.<\/p>\n
No explanation.<\/p>\n
Just the closed flap and the knowledge that my father had intended these words for me.<\/p>\n
My hands felt clumsy.<\/p>\n
I set the envelope down beside the shoes, making sure I didn't bend it.<\/p>\n
Then I pulled my chair closer to the table.<\/p>\n
I needed a moment.<\/p>\n
Marcus didn't interrupt.<\/p>\n
The kitchen was quiet enough for me to hear the faint scrape of the chair legs against the floor.<\/p>\n
I looked at the envelope again.<\/p>\n
I had imagined receiving a letter from my father more times than I wanted to admit.<\/p>\n
Not necessarily after his death.<\/p>\n
Even while he was alive, I had sometimes wished he would write down what he couldn't say to my face.<\/p>\n
Something that explained his decisions.<\/p>\n
Something that acknowledged the distance between us.<\/p>\n
Something that told me whether he had ever regretted it.<\/p>\n
I had never expected those answers to arrive in an envelope marked with my name.<\/p>\n
And now that it was in front of me, I was afraid to open it.<\/p>\n
What if it contained nothing important?<\/p>\n
What if it was another instruction, another demand, another example of my father deciding what I should do without asking what I wanted?<\/p>\n
Worse, what if it told me something I had spent years trying not to know?<\/p>\n
I looked at the shoes.<\/p>\n
They were still there, ordinary and almost new.<\/p>\n
My size.<\/p>\n
A small detail that suddenly seemed impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n
I had thought I knew what my father paid attention to.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I had been wrong about that.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps he had noticed me in ways I had never recognized.<\/p>\n
Neither possibility made the envelope easier to open.<\/p>\n
I reached for it, then stopped.<\/p>\n
My fingers rested against the paper.<\/p>\n
I could feel the slight roughness beneath my fingertips.<\/p>\n
Marcus shifted his weight beside the table.<\/p>\n
"You don't have to read it right this second," he said.<\/p>\n
I looked up at him.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
But knowing I could wait didn't mean I wanted to.<\/p>\n
I had spent years waiting for my father to explain himself.<\/p>\n
Waiting for him to acknowledge what had happened between us.<\/p>\n
Waiting for some sign that the distance hadn't meant what I feared it meant.<\/p>\n
Now I had something in front of me that might finally answer one of those questions.<\/p>\n
And I was still sitting there, afraid to find out.<\/p>\n
I pulled the envelope closer.<\/p>\n
For the first time since Marcus had arrived, I stopped wondering why he had brought the box.<\/p>\n
I began wondering what my father had been trying to tell me.<\/p>\n
The shoes were sitting near the top. I noticed their plain black leather first, then the thick soles and the simple shape. They weren't the sort of shoes anyone would … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39771,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39751\/revisions\/39771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}