The night was restless and full of orange nightmares. In my dreams, I couldn’t control my body, not even the arm and leg that still worked in my waking hours. I suffocated, the air heavy with steam and the scent of liquor that choked me. Struggling, I tried with all of my might to force a hand to move and grip something so I might pull myself up and out of the dream. The scent of peonies and rose water overpowered the whiskey in the air and I screamed.

When I woke, I jerked sideways, panting and gasping. I must not have really screamed, as Laurent never came to check on me. Relieved, I lay back in my bed, but I wouldn’t close my eyes again. Even the thought of returning to that dream left me shaking and breathless again.

In the living room one afternoon, the sound of Laurent vacuuming the carpet was muffled by my thick headphones. I was still and my eyes were closed, but my hand was tight around my phone. Notes poured into my ears, notes that I had once written onto paper but never wanted to hear. Gael had recorded almost all of my secret songs, and though it made my heart race dangerously, I forced myself to listen. Even if I pretended he hadn’t recorded it for my comfort, it wouldn’t change that he had. I unclenched my hand and focused on my other. After a couple weeks, my hand was mobile almost to the wrist. It brought a spark of relief to recall it, and I curled and uncurled my fingers just to appreciate them.

I was supposed to meet that girl, Whitney Way, who would take my place until I returned. That is, if I returned. What would she be like? What if I hated the way she played? Somehow, I thought of Digitalis, how jealous and upset she would be if she were in my shoes. Oddly, it didn’t bother me all that much to have a placeholder. The girl was a fan of mine, anyway, so perhaps she would learn to be even better than I ever was. The band might just become better without me in it.

I took a deep breath, the bittersweet thought filling my chest and stomach with tension. Laurent’s lessons whispered back from the back of my mind, reminding me to push the ugly notion aside. I must remember something good, something to appreciate. My hand, again, flexed. More effortless than I ever might have hoped, it moved as I willed it, and I was filled with gratitude once more.

Again, the music drifted from the background of my mind as a particularly private line was sung in Gael’s voice. A twinge of shame brought a flush to my cheeks as I envisioned him serenading the microphone with this depressing love letter I wrote. I took another deep breath, but it didn’t calm me the way the first one had. This might be easier if I got sleep at night, but I doubted it.

The hum of the vacuum died, and gently Laurent lifted the headphones from my head. I opened my eyes, smiling up at him as his face appeared in front of me.

“You got a letter! It feels like a card.” He mused, seemed more excited than I was by the concept.

I raised a brow, holding out my right hand for it. It shook and quivered, the arm still weak, but I wanted to use it as much as possible now that it finally moved.

“Hey, now. Don’t strain it too much.” He fussed, though he grinned with a bit of pride and amusement.

He placed the envelope into my hand, but watched my arm closely. I still couldn’t bend my wrist or elbow much at all. To open and read it, I needed to pick it up with my left hand.

There was no sender listed on the front, which seemed odd. The envelope was a familiar beige, the same shade as all of my birthday cards from my father. I closed my mouth, swallowing nervously. Laurent placed a hand on my shoulder when he noticed my mood shift and I met his eyes for a moment, drinking in the comfort in his gaze.

My finger ripped through the top of the envelope roughly, leaving it a little shredded and sloppy at the top. I wiggled the card out with a pair of fingers, holding the envelope down with my thumb until it was out a few inches.

It was a plain-looking card, a pale yellow with a geometric design on the border. As it emerged from the envelope, gold embossed letters boasted, “Thinking of You,” in the center.

I held my breath as I opened it, cautious. Familiar handwriting filled the inside of the card from corner to corner on both sides: the rigid script of my father. Even in my yearly birthday card, he never wrote more than a couple short lines.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Laurent took the envelope away and sat beside me. He didn’t read over my shoulder, instead observing my face. I put him out of my mind, struggling to focus in order to read the words.

Asya, it’s been decades since we saw each other; since we spoke. I have missed you dearly all these years, but I was too ashamed for leaving you. I didn’t believe that I had the right to speak as I wanted. Please believe me when I say that I have not forgotten you for even a day. When I saw the news about what happened to you, I was devastated. I visited you once in the hospital. To see you all grown up and sick like that was surreal.

I wish that I had stood up to your mother years ago, so I might have stayed in your life. I blame myself for the way things turned out. If I had only been there for you, maybe you wouldn’t have struggled so much. I have wondered what kind of man you’ve grown up to be. Even watching the news, reading the tabloids, and seeing your band play on TV or online hasn’t shown me that. It always brought me delight to watch what an artist you’ve become, the artist you’d always dreamt to be when you were young. Yet, I miss the son that I had. I want to know how your days go by, what feelings you have, what hopes and dreams you still foster. It was my most grievous mistake to leave you as I did. Even the day it happened, I was so overcome with regret and emotion, but I was too weak to reconnect with you. I’m a terrible father and I won’t ask you to forgive me.

Yet, I have a request that I selfishly want to ask of you. Will you meet with me? When you nearly died in the hospital, I realized that I’ve wasted these last decades of my life apart from you. Your mother won’t come, only me. There is so much that I want to talk to you about, so much that I want to hear and so much that I want to say. More than any of it, I just want to see you again, awake.

I’m not a good father, but I want to try again. I love you more dearly than you can understand. I wouldn’t blame you if you refused me, but please consider. It would mean the world.

-Ivan Kalnina

Laurent took my hand, and I realized I was crying onto the card.

“May I read what made you cry?” He asked, sweet and concerned.

I nodded, lifting my fingers from the paper so he may slide it away. As he looked it over, he rubbed small circles on my back to calm me down.

My father wants to meet me?

There wasn’t even a choice to make. I had to meet him. I had thought for all these years that he hated me. That was expected from my mother, and I have grown to stop caring for her and her reptilian coldness. Yet, losing my father was a real blow.

Occasionally, I would wonder what was going on in the home I left behind as the years passed. How was my family doing? What was my childhood neighborhood like? Did anyone still love me that loved me when I was growing up? It left me yearning and abandoned. For all these years, was that despair all for nothing? I ached to write him a letter back, but I couldn’t write very well, yet. My right hand was still shaky and weak, and my left still wrote with ugly, sloppy, and disjointed letters. I slid my phone out, determined. He probably had an online profile somewhere, I just never had the strength to look at it.

I frantically typed his name into the search bar of each social app I found, discovering a couple of his profiles. I slid through them, shocked to witness how he had changed over the years in his photos. Oddly, there weren’t any recent ones with mom in them. The recent photos weren’t as polished and perfect as the ones she would take for him as I grew up. He smiled in many of them, set often in his office environment or by a lake with other men that might be friends of his.

He didn’t post much aside from the occasional outdated comic strip or text post referring to unknown events in his personal life. I stared at his profile photo for the longest time, an image of him smiling in front of a sunset at a house I’d never seen before. Where were mom’s peonies, the white siding of my childhood home? His face, too, was transformed. When I last saw him, his hair was brown and clean cut, his face still smooth but no longer youthful. Now, it had gone mostly white with few dark streaks and he’d grown it to be shaggier than it used to be. Age creased his face, but despite his smile, there were more frown lines on his face than laughing ones.

“Asya,” Laurent broke in, tearing me from the depths of my thought.

I looked up at him, closing the app on my phone so he wouldn’t notice my father’s picture on the screen.

“Would it make you happy to meet him?” He asked, the card in his hand held tenderly.

I nodded, staring at the yellow card. Laurent followed my gaze and returned it to me. I took it gently, as if it were an egg that might break if I mishandled it.

“If you want, I can help you write a letter back to him. Or perhaps Gael can help us find a better way to contact him using the studio’s resources?” He offered, kneeling before me to speak face to face.

Again, I gave him a nod, but my focus was drifting back to my phone. I might try to message him today. Hopefully, he kept up with his online accounts, though his post activity seemed to tell otherwise. When Laurent left the room to start dinner, I opened my phone again and sent a request to my father’s account. A giddy energy built in me, making me almost nauseous. My hands shook, and I stared at his photos again. How many years ago was it I last heard his voice? I can hardly remember the last time we spoke, the words we exchanged.

Now, the meeting with Whitney had completely disappeared from my mind, the fears and tension from my nightmarish sleep momentarily wiped away. Jittery energy wriggled into me. As I waited for a notification about my father, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from my phone.