I knew we didn’t have a lot of money, but the important things were always readily available. I had hugs and food. She always smiled. I only caught her crying a couple of times.
I thought she was happy.
I didn’t realize how truly unhappy she was in life until she met Micah “Snake” Cobreski.
Until then, a lot of her smiles were fake. At six years old and before, I didn’t know a smile couldn’t reach your eyes. I didn’t know that laughter could be fake, and that she was never allergic to lemons. That her red, puffy eyes when she picked me up from Mrs. Greene’s house with those excuses were the nights that were just too bad and she spent a lot of them crying.
She was willing to give up that man for me, and I think if things turned out that way in the end, I might have ended up hating her a little. Micah didn’t let that happen. That man came into our lives like a battering ram, and I’m the man I am today because of it.
I wouldn’t have served twelve years in the Marine Corps if it weren’t for him.
I wouldn’t trust my heart with Lana, my wife of six years.
I never would’ve found the courage to be a good father to Aria, my precious two-month-old daughter if it wasn’t for the example he set for me.
I got nothing from my biological father.
Of course I remember the visits with him in prison, the man he tried to be, the advice he tripped over, the example he tried to set after uprooting us from New Mexico in the middle of first grade.
Thank God, Micah met us in Galveston because by that very summer, my father was on drugs and had been fired from the job that brought us to Texas in the first place. Micha was our rock, our touchstone, the example I learned to live by. I appreciate him in more ways than I’ll ever be able to find the words to say.
It wasn’t all butterflies and roses. I was stubborn growing up and used the words you’re not my father more than once, but he stuck with me. He never told me he wished he’d made a different decision when my mother left him because she thought I needed more time with Robert Farrow. The man adopted me when Robert thought giving up his full rights when I was nine would be easier than being responsible for child support.
I owe Micah everything.
Guilt settles inside of me as the minister finishes his generic speech.
I don’t bother to watch as the casket is lowered into the ground.
“Are you okay?” Lana asks as we walk back toward my truck.
“I’m fine,” I answer honestly.
It’s not the complete truth, but I know what she’s referring to, and it isn’t my guilt about being here. She wants to know where my head is at emotionally, and I’m fine with what I just sat through, if not a little annoyed to have had to arrange my day around the graveside service.
“Are you sure? Your dad just died.”
I take a sleeping Aria from her arms and place her gently into the rear-facing infant seat in the back of the truck.
“My dad is with my mom somewhere in the Caribbean for the second time this winter. I barely knew that man.”
I’m actually shocked it took Robert Farrow until the age of fifty-four to finally overdose. The greater shock is that he wasn’t in prison when it happened. I haven’t kept tabs on him at all, so to get the call from a hospital in San Antonio—only three hours away from where we live in Houston—five days ago was a surprise.
I called my dad—Micah. He’s been that to me since the day he adopted me, and I asked for advice. I was planning to just let the state deal with him, but he said the right thing to do would be to take care of it, that if I regretted spending a little money, I could always make more money. If I turned my back on it, the regret later on couldn’t be remedied. The man never steered me wrong in the past.
So I made the preparations—a graveside service, a basic headstone, a minister whose name I don’t know that didn’t know him. It’s more than he ever did for me.
Lana’s hand comes down on my arm, and like it always has, it has the power to calm everything inside of me.
“Tell me you’re okay.”
“Baby.” I pull her to my chest and press my lips to her forehead. “I’ve got you and my little girl. Life is perfect.”
“Almost perfect,” she counters. “In a week, the last part of your dream comes true.”