The Letter
My biological father wrote a real letter the summer I turned sixteen, longer than a birthday card, apologetic in the vague, self-serving way of someone who'd apparently decided enough time had passed that an apology could finally be safely offered.
He wanted to meet. He said he'd been thinking about me. He used the word "regret" four times in two pages, which I only know because I counted, the same strange counting habit that had tallied up two hundred and eleven baseball games a year earlier.
I brought the letter to Hollis before I brought it to my mother, which said something I didn't fully understand about myself at the time and understand completely now.
He read it twice, slowly, and handed it back to me without a single visible flicker of the reaction I'd half expected — jealousy, defensiveness, some quiet campaign to talk me out of it.
"That's your decision to make, not mine," he said. "If you want to meet him, I'll drive you myself if you want company, or I'll stay home if you don't. Either way's fine by me."
"You're not worried?" I asked.
"Worried about what," he said, and it wasn't really a question. "That eighteen years is going to lose to one letter? I'll take that bet every time."