I touched one.

Still warm.

“Dad?”

Nothing.

I pulled the chair close and sat down.

“I went.”

My voice sounded strange in the quiet room.

“I did what you asked.”

I put my hand over his.

“I met Carmen.”

For forty years, Ernesto had stayed.

And during the thirty-seven minutes when I finally left him, he died.

I don’t know how long I sat there.

Eventually, the nurse came back.

“Take all the time you need.”

I nodded.

Then I remembered Carmen’s last words.

There are two photographs you haven’t seen yet.

I looked at Dad’s clothes folded on the chair.

His wallet was inside his pants pocket.

I almost left it there.

Then I reached for it.

The Two Girls in His Wallet

Dad’s wallet was old brown leather.

Camila had bought him a new one two Christmases earlier.

He thanked her, transferred everything into it, then somehow returned to the old one within a week.

“It already knows where everything goes,” he’d said.

I opened it.

Driver’s license.

Insurance card.

Twenty-three dollars.

A grocery-store loyalty card.

Then I found a compartment behind the bills.

Two photographs were tucked inside.

The first was faded.

Mili.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, grinning with her missing front tooth. In front of her was a star-shaped hotcake.

One edge was burned.

I stared at her for a long time.

Then I pulled out the second photograph.

Me.

Five years old.

My hair was tied crookedly on one side. I was holding a fork in one hand and a hotcake in the other.

Another star.

Another burned edge.

Dad had carried both pictures.

Not one instead of the other.

Both.

I looked toward him.

“You should have told me.”

I wiped my face.

“You stubborn old man.”

Then I slipped both photographs back into the wallet.

For the first time since leaving Carmen’s house, I stopped thinking about the suitcase in Dad’s car.

I thought about what happened after he unpacked it.

He stayed when I had chickenpox.

He worked overtime when I needed braces.

At thirteen, I came home crying because a boy at school said Ernesto wasn’t my real father.

Dad was repairing the kitchen faucet.

I asked him what I should say next time.

He kept tightening the pipe.

“Tell him he’s right.”

I stared at him.

He looked up.

“I’m your fake father. That’s why I pay real bills.”

I laughed so hard I forgot to be embarrassed.

Years later, he walked me down the aisle.

When Camila was born, he sat outside the delivery room holding a ridiculous pink stuffed rabbit.

That was the man who had packed his car.

That was also the man who came home.

The Letter Carmen Kept for Me

We buried Dad four days later.

After the service, Carmen waited near the back of the church.

She held an envelope.

“He gave me this last year.”

My name was written across the front.

I opened it that evening at my kitchen table.

Dad’s handwriting covered three pages.

Mariana,

If Carmen gave you this, then you know about Mili.

You probably also know what I did after your mother died.

I stopped reading.

Camila was sitting across from me.

She was twenty-three then, old enough to recognize when I needed silence.

I continued.

Dad wrote that losing Mili had changed the way he loved people.

Before her death, love had seemed simple.

Afterward, every person he loved became someone he could lose.

Then my mother died.

He looked at five-year-old me and panicked.

I packed your clothes.

There is no kinder way to write that sentence.

I told myself Gloria could give you a better home. The truth was that I was afraid.

I had already buried one daughter.

I did not believe I could survive burying another.

I covered my mouth.

Camila reached across the table but didn’t interrupt.

The next paragraph was shorter.

Then I came home and found you under the table.

You asked if I was leaving.

I knew I could either spend my life running from losing you or spend it being your father.

So I stayed.

Near the bottom was the sentence I read three times.

You were never Mili’s replacement.

You were Mariana.

You were my daughter.

I folded the letter.

Camila looked at me.

“Mom?”

“I’m okay.”

She waited.

“Grandpa had another daughter.”

I had spent several days wondering whether I should tell her.

Dad had hidden Mili for decades.

I could have done the same.

Instead, I placed both photographs on the table.

What Aunt Gloria Remembered

The next morning, I called Aunt Gloria.

She was eighty-one and still remembered everything.

When I asked about the days after Mom’s funeral, she became quiet.

“Carmen told you.”

“So it’s true?”

“Yes.”

I stared at Dad’s letter.

“He was going to give me to you.”

“For about six hours.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

Gloria sighed.

“He was falling apart, Mariana.”

She told me Dad arrived at her house early the next morning.

His eyes were swollen.

She assumed he had come to discuss when I would move in.

Instead, he stood on her porch and said:

“Mariana isn’t going anywhere.”

Gloria asked whether he was certain.

Dad became angry.

“She’s staying in her home.”

“Ernesto, nobody is trying to take her.”

“Good.”

Then he left.

I smiled despite myself.

That sounded like him.

Gloria’s voice softened.

“He wasn’t perfect, honey.”

“I know.”

“But after that morning, I never heard him question it again.”

Neither had I.

Sunday Morning

That night, I told Camila everything.

Mili.

The reservoir.

The star-shaped hotcakes.

The suitcase.

Carmen.

Dad’s promise.

Camila listened without interrupting.

Finally, she picked up Mili’s photograph.

“So Grandpa made the stars because of her.”

“Yes.”

She looked at my photograph.

“And then he made them for you.”

I nodded.

She placed the pictures side by side.

“Maybe that’s why he kept doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“Remembering her without stopping loving you.”

The next morning was Sunday.

I woke to noise in the kitchen.

Camila was standing at the counter with flour everywhere.

“What are you doing?”

She lifted the metal star Carmen had given me.

“Continuing a family tradition.”

We found Dad’s old apple-cinnamon recipe in my recipe box.

Neither of us was very good at it.

The first hotcake stuck.

The second tore when Camila flipped it.

The third came out almost recognizable as a star, except one point folded underneath and one edge was black.

Camila put it on my plate.

I stared at it.

“That’s terrible.”

She nodded seriously.

“Perfect.”

I laughed.

The exact word Dad always used.

Camila sat across from me.

Between us were the two photographs.

Mili with her star.

Me with mine.

For years, I had thought those Sunday mornings proved Dad had always known exactly how to be my father.

Now I knew better.

He had been a man who once packed a suitcase because he was terrified of loving another daughter.

Then he unpacked it.

And every Sunday after that, he stood at the stove and tried again.

I cut into the burned star.

It tasted exactly the way I remembered.