The father’s mouth went dry.
“She said you were thinking about it.”
“I have never thought about sending you away.”
The girl looked at him.
“Really?”
“Never.”
“She said you were tired.”
The father felt the words physically.
“Tired of what?”
“Me.”
He stared at his daughter.
Then he understood why she had been falling asleep in class.
Why homework had gone missing.
Why she stopped asking friends over.
Why she began apologizing before asking simple questions.
Why she had started making her bed perfectly.
Why she once cried because she dropped a glass and he laughed, thinking the reaction was exaggerated.
Why she asked two months earlier:
“Would you still love me if I got in trouble a lot?”
He had answered:
“Of course.”
Then gone back to his laptop.
He had not asked why.
The father reached across the table.
“Look at me.”
She did.
“You cannot misbehave enough for me to stop being your father.”
Her mouth trembled.
“You cannot make enough mistakes for me to stop loving you.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
“I am not sending you away.”
Another tear.
“Okay?”
She nodded.
He held out his arms.
She did not immediately move.
That pause hurt.
Then she climbed into him.
He held her.
She cried quietly against his work shirt.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Like someone finally allowing herself to be tired.
The father stared over her shoulder toward the security camera.
The little indicator still glowed.
He had installed the system two years earlier after a package theft.
Kitchen.
Front door.
Back patio.
Garage.
The camera should have been recording automatically to cloud storage whenever motion occurred.
Three months earlier, his wife told him the kitchen camera had stopped uploading.
She said the app kept freezing.
He believed her.
He had been too busy to fix it.
That morning, the teacher called him at work.
She asked whether things at home had changed.
He said no.
She explained that his daughter had become anxious on days he worked late.
She cried after receiving a text from home.
She fell asleep during reading.
She had recently told a school counselor:
“I have to finish before Dad gets home.”