“So you don’t know yet?” he asked quietly.
My father immediately squeezed my hand harder.
Robert, this is not the time.
That’s when I realized that this was not just any dinner.
The day before, my father had called me to ask me not to make plans for Saturday night. He never invited me to restaurants, especially in front of his friends. Even on my birthdays, I used to just congratulate myself briefly and give myself an envelope with money.
My father had always given me everything I needed, but I had never been loving. He didn’t hug me. He didn’t tell me he loved me. I didn’t talk about my mother almost ever. All I knew was that I had died a few months after my birth.
Every time I was a child, I asked who I looked like, my father would answer:
“You have your mother’s eyes.
Then he was silent and left.
But that night he seemed like a completely different man. He had booked a private table in an expensive restaurant and was wearing the black suit he had kept for years in his closet. In the middle of the table was a thick brown envelope with my full name written on it.
“What’s inside?” I asked.
You’ll open it after dinner.
Why not now?
“Because if you open it now, you may not want to stay until the end.
His response froze my blood.
I began to think that maybe he was seriously ill and that the envelope contained his will. Then I noticed that his friends avoided looking me in the eye. We ordered the food, but I couldn’t swallow a single bite.
Men talked about their youthful years. From time to time they mentioned a woman named Laura, but every time they uttered her name, my father would tense.
Laura was my mother’s name.
“You really look a lot like her,” Robert said.
Did you know my mother well?
I was about to answer when my father interrupted him.
“We didn’t come here to talk about her.
“So why did we come?” I asked. What are they all hiding from me?
No one answered.
