I had been the one waiting. I had been the one waiting for a sign, for a call, for a letter back. I realized now that the wall between us wasn’t made of my mistakes, but of his expectations.

He didn’t want an apology. He wanted me to stand up for something, or someone, that I had failed to protect when he was a boy. He was testing my conviction, one letter at a time.

I didn’t wait for morning. I grabbed my keys, the ones that had been sitting on the counter for too long. I drove the forty miles to the small apartment complex where he worked as a mechanic. My truck rattled on the gravel, a sound that usually annoyed me, but tonight it felt like a heartbeat. I didn’t know what I was going to say when I saw him. I just knew I couldn’t be the man who kept writing letters to a closed door.

When I pulled into his spot, his light was still on. I saw his shadow pass the window. My hands were finally shaking now, and I couldn’t stop them. I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. It wasn’t a loud knock. I just tapped the wood, three times. The lock clicked immediately, like he had been standing right behind it.

He opened the door. He was wearing the same coveralls he wore as a kid, stained with grease and motor oil. He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look angry. He just looked tired. He looked at me, then at the stack of envelopes I was holding in my left hand, and he finally sighed.

“I wondered when you’d check the glue,” he said. His voice was raspy, like he hadn’t used it much that day.

I held the envelopes out. I didn’t say anything at first because I knew if I opened my mouth, I would start crying, and I wasn’t going to let him see that. I stood there on the threshold, a man who had spent a decade building a bridge of paper, only to realize he was standing on the wrong bank.

“You read them all,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“Every word,” he replied. He stepped aside so I could see into his kitchen. There was a small desk in the corner, and on it, stacked neatly, were the ones I hadn’t sent back to the post office yet. He hadn’t just been reading them. He had been living with them.

“I was waiting for you to tell me the truth,” he said. He looked at me, and for the first time in nine years, I saw the boy who used to help me fix the fence line before the world got complicated. “I didn’t want an apology for the divorce, Dad. I wanted you to tell me you were sorry for lying about why you stayed.”