I sat in my car in the hospital parking lot with the engine off and my hands on the steering wheel, and I did not cry. I flexed my left hand. The third and fourth fingers bent wrong. They always bend wrong now. The metacarpals healed crooked because I splinted them myself in a collapsing building and never had them properly reset, and they ached the way they always ache when the air is cold. And the thing I’m gripping is the absence of something I can’t get back. Richard Callaway died of a heart attack eleven months later, age sixty-nine. I learned about it from Harold Mitchell, not from Diane, not from Tyler. I attended the funeral. Diane introduced me to mourners as Richard’s older daughter. She’s had a difficult time. And then she filed paperwork to have me removed as beneficiary on his life insurance policy. One hundred twelve thousand dollars. She forged a notarized letter claiming I had voluntarily relinquished my share. The notarization was executed by a paralegal named Susan Ward, whom Diane paid four hundred dollars in cash. That is the woman who organized the memorial. Late October. Brierwood Country Club. Two hundred guests. A three-tier vanilla cake with my father’s photograph printed on an edible topper. Prime rib carving stations. Glazed salmon. Champagne flutes on silver trays. A raw bar with shrimp cocktail that nobody was eating because it was October and the terrace was cold and the heat lamps glowed orange and did nothing. Richard Callaway would have wanted pulled pork and paper plates and cornhole in the backyard. He would have wanted his fishing buddies and a cooler of beer and someone to tell the story about the time he caught a largemouth bass in his neighbor’s pond using a piece of hot dog as bait. He would not have wanted champagne towers. He would not have wanted Diane’s real estate colleagues and charity board friends and country club members circulating through a ballroom with printed programs that listed the Callaway family’s accomplishments in descending order of visibility. Tyler’s insurance career. Diane’s volunteer work. Richard’s years at the postal service. Small but strong, the program said. That was the phrase Diane used, small but strong. I was not in the program. I walked through the front entrance at 4:15. The sky was the color of old pewter, heavy with clouds that wouldn’t commit to rain. The air had the first real bite of autumn, sharp enough to sting exposed skin. I wore dark slacks, a navy cardigan over a white blouse, and flat black shoes I could move in. My watch sat inside my left wrist. My wallet sat in my left pocket. My hair was pulled back. I drew no attention. Diane stood near the entrance in a charcoal dress and pearls, greeting guests with a rehearsed warmth that smelled like performance.
“Oh, Megan.”
A pause calibrated to convey surprise.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
No embrace. A half turn to the next guest before I could respond. No seat saved. No place card with my name. No mention in the printed program, which I picked up from a table by the door and read standing in the coat-check alcove while two hundred people moved around me like water around a stone. The memorial table stood near the far wall. Fifteen photographs of Richard Callaway in matching silver frames. Richard at his postal service retirement ceremony. Richard and Diane at a charity gala. Richard with Tyler at a Nationals game. Richard and his fishing buddies on a dock in the Outer Banks. I was in three of those original photographs. I know because I have the originals. Diane had them reprinted, cropped, adjusted. I no longer existed in the visual record of my own father’s life. I found an empty chair near the emergency exit. A server placed a plate of glazed salmon and roasted asparagus in front of me. I folded my napkin beside the untouched plate. Diane took the podium at five. The microphone squealed once. She smiled through it.
“Richard Callaway was the heart of this family.”
