Part 5: What He Left in the Glove Box
The storm passed the way old pain does—slowly, without apology.
By the time the last drop fell, the air was thick and quiet, like the world had wrung itself out and gone still to catch its breath.
Dad and I sat in the truck, soaked to the bone, our clothes clinging like wet regrets.
Outside, the broken raft lay half-swallowed in mud, its ropes loose, boards split, dream gone.
He didn’t say a word.
Neither did I.
Eventually, he opened the glove box again.
His hand disappeared into that little cavern, digging through papers, a rusted flashlight, an empty tobacco tin.
He pulled out something wrapped in a grocery bag—old and crinkled with grease marks.
He handed it to me like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“Here,” he muttered. “Take it.”
Inside the bag was a folded bundle of paper.
Not documents. Not insurance forms.
Letters.
At least ten of them.
All with my name on the envelope.
Dates scrawled on the top—1978, 1981, 1984… The last one was May 1993. The week I left Ohio for good.
“You wrote these?” I asked, flipping through them.
He nodded, eyes forward, not meeting mine. “Never mailed ‘em.”
“Why?”
He rubbed his wrist—there was a faded hospital band still ghosting his skin where it had been months earlier.
“Didn’t know if they’d help… or make things worse.”
I opened the one on top.
Inside was a note, written in his blunt, stiff handwriting. The kind you get from years working in a factory, using your fingers to guide bolts and wires more than pens.
“Tom—
Your mother says you passed algebra. I know I didn’t help. I’m proud you pushed through.”
No signature.
Just a line at the bottom:
“Don’t tell your mother I said that.”
I felt something give in my chest.
Something I’d braced against for years.
All that time, I’d told myself he didn’t care. That he was too stubborn or bitter or broken to reach out.
But the truth was there—in ink. In paper stained with motor oil. In words he never dared let loose while he was still breathing.
He cleared his throat, slow and gravelly.
“The one from ‘93,” he said, voice almost gone, “that’s the one I meant to give you before you left.”
I opened it with shaky fingers.
“Tom,
I saw your bus leave. You were looking out the window. I wanted to wave but couldn’t lift my arm.
That’s not your fault.
It’s mine, son. All mine.”
I pressed the paper to my leg, willing my eyes not to blur it.
My throat burned.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered.
He still wouldn’t look at me.
“I know,” he said. “That was the problem.”
We sat like that for a long time—just breathing.
The letters between us like little truce flags.
He pulled a flask from his coat and took a single sip.
Then he passed it to me.
It was cheap bourbon, hot and sour on the tongue.
Tasted like forgiveness.
“You remember Michael’s funeral?” he asked suddenly.
I shook my head. “I was three.”
He nodded like he already knew.
“Closed casket. Your mother held onto your hand the whole time. I stood by the truck. Couldn’t go in.”
He looked down at his lap.
“Coward’s what I was.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
There was no fixing that moment. No undoing of a pain that old.
But I could tell he wasn’t confessing to be pitied.
He was handing me something.
A truth.
A fracture line.
A reason.
“I kept thinking,” he continued, “what if I lose you too?”
His voice caught on the word you.
“That’s why I held back. Didn’t want to love you too loud.”
I let that sit.
Let it soak into me like the rain had soaked my shirt hours ago.
“You should’ve,” I said quietly.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I know that now.”
A crow called from the woods.
Somewhere downstream, a branch cracked and splashed into the current.
The world kept going.
He leaned back, eyes closed.
“You know, the VA nurse told me last year my heart rhythm was off again. Offered to put me on a Holter monitor, maybe adjust meds.”
I blinked. “And?”
He cracked an eye open.
“I told her no. Said if I was gonna go, I’d go in my truck or on the riverbank—not strapped to some blinking box waiting for a second opinion.”
I wanted to scream at him.
Wanted to ask why men like him would rather die on their own terms than live with help.
But I didn’t.
Because I finally understood.
It wasn’t pride.
It was fear dressed in stubbornness.
And regret hiding behind “I’m fine.”
“Mom used to worry about your blood pressure,” I said.
“She worried too much,” he replied, but there was no bite in it.
He looked at me then, for real.
“You worry now too?”
I paused.
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
He grunted. “Well… Don’t let it make you quiet like me.”
That one sentence hit me harder than any storm we’d weathered that week.
Because all these years I’d been doing the same thing.
Holding my tongue.
Not calling Dylan when I should’ve.
Not asking about his world, his problems, his music that sounded like static to my ears.
Maybe I wasn’t afraid of Dylan being like me.
Maybe I was afraid he’d leave before I said what needed saying.
Just like I had.
“Hey,” I said suddenly, reaching for the letters, “you mind if I keep these?”
Dad gave a small shrug. “They were always yours.”
I tucked them into my bag like they were gold.
Because in a way, they were.
Proof.
Love.
Unspoken apologies wrapped in paper.
The rain had stopped, but the clouds still hung low.
A storm might return. Or it might not.
Didn’t matter now.
Because the worst of it—the storm between us—was finally over.
[End of Part 5]
👉 Part 6: His Chest Tightened Just Once—But I Saw Everything
It wasn’t dramatic. No collapse. No scream.
Just a hand on his ribs and a flash in his eyes.
That’s when I realized I’d never be ready to let go.
And maybe, just maybe, neither was he.
