Mom died when I was nine.
After that, it was just Dad and me in the little house on the edge of town. He worked long shifts, kept food in the fridge, and signed my school forms. He made sure I had a roof over my head and a coat for winter.
But he never seemed to care how my day had been.
When I came home from school upset, he told me to toughen up. When I got excited about something, he usually nodded without looking away from the television.
I learned to stop telling him things.
“Can I get new shoes? These let water in,” I remember asking him once.
He glanced at my feet.
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