We were driving in the car

We were driving in the car, I was ten. My mother was angry at us, and as always whenever she wanted to teach us a lesson, she’d tell us stories about our father. You know he never even showed on your birthday, V, she said. He spent the night before with a prostitute, and showed up at home drunk and wearing another woman’s lipstick on his skin. He showed up on your birthday morning drunk, and went to bed. Our plans to go to the mall that day and buy you your perfect present, a playhouse, fell through. I headed out alone and bought something else, I don’t remember. I found a woman’s telephone number in his pocket.

That story still haunts me today. As we drove in the car that day my world fell apart. I knew it then, my dad never cared about me, and on my 6^th birthday, he betrayed me. That day was supposed to be the best of my life, I was supposed to remember it with him in the picture.

Instead, ever since I was 5, I don’t remember you ever being in the picture.

I never quite could remember that day the same way again.