“Dad,” I said, after several moments of awkward silence.

He rinsed, I stacked. And the rhythm kept us distracted. The distraction kept us silent. And the silence kept us from speaking the truth.

“Yes, honey?”

“We’ve got to talk about this.”

“I know.”

“So talk.”

He sighed deeply, stilling his movements, “Your mother and I are two very busy people. We’ve always been busy, but there was a time when we still made sure we checked in with each other. We still made sure the other person felt important…needed. Lately there’s just…we don’t talk anymore. We don’t take the time to try to figure out what’s missing either. I don’t know, Spence. You’re old enough to know what it’s like to feel alone. You know what it’s like to want someone to talk to or at least someone to just sit with you.”

“Yeah.”

“Well that’s what I wanted. And so I found it somewhere else.”

“You need to talk to her. You know that.”

“I do know that.”

There was no one who understood his situation more. I couldn’t necessarily relate in exactly the way he needed me to, but this was my chosen profession and I knew the wants and needs of my clients very, very well. Even the psychological ones. But this was my father. This wasn’t just some john that went home to a family I would never have to see. This man was going home to a woman, looking her right in the eyes and lying. And this woman—this unsuspecting woman—was my mother.

“So I found out about the Dennison House. Aiden made it sound so easy,” he continued, no longer looking at me, but instead staring at the sink.

“He’s good at that.”

“And I thought about it a long time before I actually made the call.”

“I’m sure they all do.”

He nodded, “Yeah, well…eventually I did make it, however, and I met Madison. I met Kyla a few times.”

“Seriously?”

He had no idea who Kyla was. He had no idea that at this point he had arranged “meetings” with both his daughter and the sister of his grandchild’s mother. This was all starting to spiral into one gigantic mess.

“But only when I couldn’t reach Madison.”