on father’s day five-year-old trella gave papa a picture. there was a crayon child laughing, twin palms thrown high in the air as if asking for a hug. a list of things she was thankful for stretched across the bottom of the picture in clumsy, broken script. later she found it folded and coffee-stained on the kitchen table, ringed with circles the color of whiskey where he had placed his mug over the paper. still wet.
she cried then, and later, when her picture made the prettiest origami airplane, she flew it over the hill and didn’t watch to see where it landed. in the weeks afterwards trella kept waiting for him to ask her where it was. all she got was radio silence.
this was what trella whispered to cressa that one winter morning, hands tucked tight in her pockets as she waited for a response, feeling as if she were on the outside of some inside joke. cressa stared at her, large eyes bulletproof blank. so solemn. she reminded trella of the fallen deer by the roadside, sharply aware of its impending death, resigned to the inevitability of it.
cressa’s voice, steady as a tightrope-walker. “i don’t have a father.” she said. “he’s dead.”