I’m sitting here now, looking at that photo of the redfish. I keep it in a drawer because I can’t bear to throw it away, but I can’t bear to keep it out, either. It’s my trophy. My proof of what I valued more than my own child’s birth.
Sometimes I think about going back to the house. I want to see if the kitchen still smells like that. I want to see if the freezer door is still hanging open.
But I know what I’d find. Nothing. Just an empty house and the memory of a woman who finally realized that a man who labels his own kindness isn’t kind at all.
I don’t know if she’ll ever talk to me again. My mother won’t answer my calls. My sister-in-law hangs up the moment she hears my voice.
I’m starting to think the silence is the only thing I have left.
I keep replaying the last night in that kitchen. The way the ice maker sounded when I shut the door. Click, clack. Then silence.
I thought I was being prepared. I thought I was being the responsible one.
I was just making sure that when I left, I’d be able to say I did everything right.
I did everything right, and I lost everything.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what she wanted me to see.
I didn’t lose them because I left for a fishing trip. I lost them because for seven years, I was already gone.
I’m sitting here at 2:00 AM wondering if I should write her one more letter. A real one. No excuses. No talk about providing. Just the truth.
But what would I say? That I’m sorry? That I wish I could go back and change the dates?
She’d see through it in a second. She always did.
I’ll probably just sit here for another hour. Then I’ll go to sleep. I’ll wake up tomorrow, go to the plant, and pretend I’m the same person I was before the redfish, before the freezer, before the silence.
But I’m not.
I’m the man who left his family for a photograph, and I’m the man who lives with the smell of spoiled meat in his head every single time he hears a freezer door close.
I don’t know if I’m sorry, or if I’m just sorry I got caught.
I think that’s the part that hurts the most.
