THE INTERVIEW

6: The Family Introduced

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Q28. "Tell me about Melissa."

The question was simple. The answer wasn't.

"She's twenty-nine," Dale said. "Lives in Charlotte. Works in accounting—she was always good with numbers, even as a kid. Better than me." He tried to smile. It felt thin on his face. "She has a husband, Tyler. And a baby—my grandson. Theo. He's eight months old."

"You said earlier that you don't talk as much as you should. What did you mean by that?"

"I meant—" He paused, searching for the honest answer, the one that wouldn't make him sound like a terrible father. "We're not close. We used to be, when she was young. But somewhere along the way, we lost that. The connection."

"What happened?"

"Work happened." The word came out flat, heavy. "I was always working. Double shifts, weekends, holidays. I told myself it was for her—for the family—but I think I was just hiding. It was easier to be at the warehouse than to be at home, figuring out how to talk to a teenage girl. So I worked. And she grew up. And by the time I looked up, she was gone."

"That sounds like loss."

"It is loss." He hadn't thought of it that way before, but the word fit. "I lost her while she was still in the house. Lost her in slow motion, one missed dinner at a time."

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Q29. "Are you close now? You and Melissa?"

"We're—" He searched for the right word. "Civil. We talk on holidays. She sends pictures of Theo sometimes." He thought of his phone, still in his pocket, the cracked screen with her eight-year-old face. He hadn't changed the photo. Hadn't been able to bring himself to replace that gap-toothed smile with the woman she'd become, the stranger who looked at him with polite distance across Thanksgiving tables. "But close? No. We're not close."

"Does that bother you?"

"Of course it bothers me. She's my daughter." The words came out sharper than he intended. He softened his voice. "I'm sorry. It's just—it's a wound that doesn't heal. Every time I see her, I remember what we had when she was little. And I see what we don't have now. And I know it's my fault."

"Your fault specifically? Not just circumstances?"

"My choices. My priorities." He looked down at his hands, the age spots and the blue veins, the hands that had spent so many hours working instead of holding his daughter. "I chose the job over her, again and again. I told myself I was doing it for her—for the family—but that was a lie. I was doing it for me. Because work made sense to me. Because I knew how to be a good employee. I didn't know how to be a good father."

"And Linda? How did she handle it?"

"Linda—" He paused. This was territory he rarely entered, even in his own mind. "Linda picked up the slack. She was there for the school plays and the parent-teacher conferences and the late-night talks. She was the one Melissa went to when she needed something. I was just—I was the guy who paid the bills and came home tired and fell asleep in front of the TV."

"That's harsh."

"It's accurate."

Ms. Vance made a note. The scratch of pen on paper. The hum of the lights. The room holding its breath.

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Q30. "How did your career affect your relationship with Melissa growing up? Specifically—what do you think she experienced, having a father who was always at work?"

Dale was quiet for a moment. The question required him to imagine his daughter's inner life, to see himself through her eyes. He'd avoided doing that for years. It was too painful, the picture that emerged.

"She learned not to need me," he said finally. "That's what absence teaches children. That you're not reliable, not essential. That they have to depend on themselves, or on someone else." He swallowed. "She learned to go to Linda for everything. And when Linda wasn't enough, she learned to handle it alone. I taught her that her father wouldn't be there when it mattered."

"And now?"

"Now she's an adult who doesn't need me. Mission accomplished." The bitterness in his voice surprised him. "She's self-sufficient, independent, capable. All the things I supposedly wanted her to be. And she got there by learning she couldn't count on me."

"Do you resent her independence?"

"No. I resent—" He stopped, feeling the words pile up behind his teeth, dangerous and true. "I resent myself. For making it necessary. For turning her into someone who doesn't need a father, because the father she had wasn't worth needing."

Ms. Vance set down her pen. The small gesture felt significant somehow, a shift in the conversation's gravity.

"Dale, can I ask you something directly?"

"You've been asking me things directly for the past hour."

"Something more direct than interview questions." Her eyes held his, that not-quite-color, that patient depth. "Do you love your daughter?"

"Of course I love her. What kind of question is that?"

"Does she know?"

The response died in his throat. He opened his mouth to say yes, obviously, of course she knows—but the word wouldn't come. Because when was the last time he'd said it? When was the last time he'd told Melissa he loved her, not as a reflex at the end of a phone call, not as an obligation at the bottom of a birthday card, but as a truth he needed her to hear?

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know if she knows."

"When did you last tell her?"

He tried to remember. Christmas, maybe. Or her birthday—had he called on her birthday? He'd meant to. He'd written it in his phone, set a reminder. But the day had gotten away from him, the way days did when you were drowning in rejection emails and 3 AM panic, and by the time he'd remembered it was too late to call, and he'd sent a text instead, and she'd sent back a thumbs-up emoji, and that had been that.

"I don't remember," he admitted. "I don't remember the last time I said the words."

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Q31. "What about showing her? If you can't remember saying it, can you remember showing it? Being there for something that mattered to her?"

He searched his memory. The wedding—but he'd barely spoken to her at the wedding, too busy shaking hands with relatives he didn't know, making small talk with Linda's cousins. The graduation—but she'd graduated from UNC Charlotte the same month Morrison let him go, and he'd been distracted, hollow, going through the motions. The baby—he'd held Theo twice, met him twice, driven to Charlotte and back in a single day both times because he couldn't afford the hotel.

"Her eighth birthday," he said suddenly. The memory surfaced unbidden, vivid and warm. "I was there for her eighth birthday. We had a party in the backyard. Linda made the cake—vanilla with pink frosting, Melissa's favorite. And there was a moment—"

He stopped. The image was right there, his daughter in the backyard, and he could almost taste the sugar and summer air—

"What moment?" Ms. Vance asked softly.

"She—" He reached for it. "She opened the present I got her. I don't remember what it was. But she looked at me, and she smiled, and she said—"

The memory flickered. The smile was there but the words were gone. Had there been words? There must have been words.

"What did she say, Dale?"

"I don't—" He pressed his fingers to his temples. The headache was building there, a dull pressure behind his eyes. "I don't remember. I remember the smile. I remember the pink frosting. But I don't remember what she said."

"That's okay." Ms. Vance's voice was gentle. "Memories fade. It was over twenty years ago."

"Twenty-one years." The math was automatic. Melissa at eight, Melissa now at twenty-nine. "Twenty-one years."

"Tell me more about that day. The party. What else do you remember?"

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Q32. Dale closed his eyes. The memory was there, waiting—he just had to reach for it.

The backyard of the old house on Briarwood, before they'd moved to the place on Elm. The folding table with the paper tablecloth, purple, her favorite color that year. The neighborhood kids running around, streamers tied to the fence, the late-summer heat making everything shimmer.

"It was August," he said. "Hot. We'd set up the sprinkler for the kids to run through. Linda was worried about the cake melting, kept moving it to the shade." He could see it now, the scene assembling itself in his mind's eye. "Melissa was wearing a yellow dress. She'd picked it out herself—insisted on it, even though Linda thought it was too fancy for a backyard party."

"A yellow dress." Ms. Vance's pen scratched against paper. "What else was she wearing?"

"I don't—" He tried to see the whole picture. The yellow dress was clear, bright against the green of the lawn. But below that—shoes? Sandals? "I don't remember her shoes. Bare feet, maybe. Kids always wanted to go barefoot in the sprinkler."

"What about her hair? How did she wear it then?"

"Braids." The detail came immediately, certain. "Linda always did her hair in braids for parties. Two braids, with ribbons at the ends. I think they were—" He hesitated. "Yellow? To match the dress? Or maybe purple, for the tablecloth."

"You're not sure."

"I'm not sure."

"That's okay." Ms. Vance made another note. "You remember the important things. The dress. The cake. The smile."

"The smile," he repeated. He could see it still, his daughter's face lit up with eight-year-old joy, gap-toothed and radiant. "She had the best smile. Before she learned to be—" He caught himself. "Before she grew up."

"Before she learned to be what?"

"Guarded. Careful." He opened his eyes. "Before she learned not to show so much. Kids smile with their whole faces. Adults learn to hold back. I watched her learn that, over the years. Watched the openness close up, little by little, until she smiled like a stranger."

"That sounds like grief."

"It is grief." The word surprised him. He hadn't thought of it that way before. "I grieved her while she was still alive. Grieved the child she was, even as I watched her become someone else. Someone I didn't know how to reach."

Ms. Vance was watching him with that absolute attention, that stillness that seemed to absorb everything he said. Behind her, the water stain sat on the ceiling, and Dale realized he'd been staring at it without seeing it, letting his gaze rest there while he talked about his daughter.

He looked away. The stain seemed darker than before. Larger. But that was impossible—water stains didn't grow, didn't change. It was the light, maybe. The flickering fluorescent tube playing tricks on his eyes.

"I think," Ms. Vance said quietly, "I'd like to hear more about that birthday. The party. The moment with the cake. Would you tell me about it in detail?"

The door was behind him. He could feel it there, at his back, patient and present. He could end this conversation whenever he wanted. Thank her for her time, stand up, walk out. Find another company, another waiting room, another conference room with bad lighting and stale air and questions that peeled him open layer by layer.

"Sure," he said. "I'll tell you about it."

He took a breath, and he remembered.