Emma opened the journal three days later.
She had told herself she would wait for Daniel. That it should be something they approached together, like stepping onto unstable ground with at least one other person aware of the risk. But the journal had been sitting on her kitchen table, wrapped in its own silence, and silence had always been her weakest defense.
It was raining again—not heavily, just enough to blur the edges of the city. The apartment lights were on though it was still afternoon, casting a soft, artificial warmth that made the shadows gentler.
Emma sat at the table and pulled the journal toward her.
The leather was worn smooth at the corners, darkened by years of handling. When she opened the strap, it made a faint creak, like something exhaling after a long time closed.
The first page was dated.
March 14
No year.
The handwriting was the same as the letter but less careful, more human.
I am writing this because not writing it feels like lying.
Emma read slowly, letting each line settle.
Today I saw Emma at the market. She was holding her mother's hand and asking questions about everything. She wanted to know why apples had different colors. Why the fish were dead. Why people looked sad even when nothing bad was happening.
I wanted to answer all of it.
Emma swallowed.
I didn't speak to her. I stood three aisles away and pretended to compare prices I didn't care about. This is what I have become: a man who practices restraint where courage is required.
Her fingers tightened on the edge of the page.
She turned to the next entry.
June 2
Emma lost her first tooth today. I know this because her mother told me. She laughed when she said it, as if it was a small thing. I smiled at the right moments.
I went home and broke a glass in the sink. On purpose.
Emma closed her eyes briefly.
She kept reading.
The entries were uneven—sometimes weeks apart, sometimes written on consecutive days. They chronicled moments Emma barely remembered and moments she did: school performances watched from the back row, birthdays marked by sealed envelopes, and the day her mother finally told Thomas not to come anymore.
October 11
She said my presence was a wound that never closed.
She is not wrong.
Emma felt the familiar pull of anger rise in her chest, sharp and hot. Anger at him. At her mother. At the quiet compromises adults made while children learned to live with the consequences.
She flipped forward.
January 9
Another year. Another letter I won't send.
I wonder if she knows I remember.
Emma pressed her palm flat against the page, grounding herself.
By the time she reached the later entries, her chest ached with the cumulative weight of a life lived sideways.
Then she reached a page that made her stop.
August 27
Daniel asked me today if I ever wanted another child.
Emma's breath caught.
He was twelve. Too young to ask the question with the understanding it deserves, but old enough to notice what is missing.
I told him some people don't get everything they want.
It was the truth. Just not the whole one.
Emma closed the journal.
Her hands were shaking now, not with grief, but with the disorienting realization that Daniel had been closer to the truth far earlier than either of them had known.
She reached for her phone.
They met that evening at Emma's apartment.
Daniel stood awkwardly in the doorway when she opened the door, as though unsure whether crossing the threshold required permission beyond the obvious. She stepped aside.
"Come in," she said.
He did, glancing around with quiet curiosity. The space was modest but orderly, lived-in without being personal. No photographs on the walls. No visible past.
"You've read it," he said.
"Yes," Emma replied. "Some of it."
He nodded, removing his coat and folding it over the chair. He sat at the table across from her, eyes drawn immediately to the journal.
"What does it say?" he asked.
Emma slid it toward him.
"It says he was a coward," she said. "And that he knew it."
Daniel opened the journal, flipping a few pages, his expression tightening as recognition settled in. He stopped at the August 27 entry.
His shoulders sagged slightly.
"I remember that day," he said quietly. "I didn't know why I asked. I just… felt something missing."
Emma watched him, struck by the symmetry of their losses.
"He loved us both," she said. "In different ways. In equally incomplete ones."
Daniel nodded. "That sounds right."
They sat together, the journal between them like a shared inheritance neither had asked for.
After a moment, Daniel spoke again.
"My mother deserves to know," he said.
Emma stiffened. "So does mine."
He met her gaze. "Are you ready for that?"
Emma thought of her mother's carefully maintained certainty. Of the story she had been told and retold until it became truth by repetition.
"No," she said honestly. "But I don't think readiness is part of this."
Daniel gave a small, humorless smile. "My father used to say that too."
Emma raised an eyebrow. "He did?"
"Yes. About other things," Daniel said. "Work. Illness. Loss."
He closed the journal gently.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
"Yes."
"When you read it," he asked, "did it change how you feel about him?"
Emma considered.
"Yes," she said slowly. "And no. It doesn't excuse him. But it… humanizes him."
Daniel nodded. "That's dangerous."
"Why?"
"Because once you see someone as human," he said, "it's harder to hate them. And sometimes hate is the only thing holding grief together."
Emma absorbed that quietly.
They talked for hours—about fragments of memory, about their mothers, about the uncomfortable question of what they were to each other now. There were no dramatic revelations, no sudden intimacy. Just careful honesty, laid down layer by layer.
When Daniel finally stood to leave, the night had settled fully outside the windows.
"I'm glad I know," he said at the door. "Even if it hurts."
Emma nodded. "Me too."
He hesitated, then added, "Whatever this becomes… I want to do it right."
She held his gaze. "So do I."
After he left, Emma returned to the table and reopened the journal.
She turned to the last page.
It was blank.
She stared at it for a long time, then reached for a pen.
Slowly, deliberately, she began to write.
Not to her father.
Not to the past.
But the future was no longer avoidable.