Walking through the rooms, I found no photographs of me, no sentimental trinkets, just bare, functional furniture and shelves lined with history books. It confirmed everything I had always believed about him: he was a cold, detached man who lived an isolated life by his own design.

By the second day, I had managed to pack up the kitchen and the sparse living room. I moved on to the hallway, pulling down the creaky wooden stairs that led up to the attic. I figured I would just take a quick glance to make sure there wasn’t a hidden safe or important tax documents tucked away in the rafters.

The attic was stiflingly hot and thick with dust. Most of the space was empty, save for a few discarded lamps and a heavy stack of winter coats shoved into the far corner. Underneath those coats, completely hidden from casual view, was a medium-sized, weather-beaten cardboard box.

I dragged it out into the dim light of the single overhead bulb and peeled back the brittle packing tape. When I looked inside, all the air left my lungs. Sitting right on top of a stack of faded manila folders was a small, worn leather book.

I recognized the scuffed corners and the broken brass latch immediately. It was my high school diary. This was the diary I had religiously hidden under my mattress from the time I was fourteen until I was almost seventeen. It was my lifeline during the darkest, most confusing years of my adolescence.

I had written down every tear, every frustration, every ounce of hatred I felt toward my father for abandoning us, and every piece of agonizing guilt I felt for not being “good enough” to make him stay. I had assumed it got thrown out or lost during my college years.

My hands began to shake as I lifted it from the box. How did he have this? Had he sneaked into our house? Had he stolen it during one of his rare, awkward weekend visits? I sat down hard on the dusty floorboards. I flipped the cover open, half-expecting to just see my own faded blue handwriting looping across the pages in dramatic, teenage angst.

But as my eyes focused on the first entry, I literally gasped out loud in the empty attic. My father wasn’t just hoarding my diary. He had been having a conversation with me inside of it. Every single page was covered in his distinct, sharp handwriting.

He had used a red pen, filling the margins, the blank spaces between my paragraphs, and the empty back pages with thousands and thousands of words. I turned to an entry dated October 14th, the year I was fifteen. I had written: Mom cried again today.

She says dad didn’t even call her on their anniversary. I hate him so much. I wish he was dead. Why wasn’t I enough to make him stay?