I took a long look at him, while he did the same to me. As I drank in the details of my long-lost father’s face, my first-hand familiarity with his features made it easy for me to detect the fear he was trying to conceal.
He looked older than I’d expected—but that was probably because he’d never been older than nineteen in every photo of him I’d ever seen. I think part of me was also subconsciously hoping that when I saw him, it would appear that he hadn’t aged at all, because the EDA had frozen him in carbonite or subjected him to light-speed time dilation to keep him young for the coming war. No such luck. He would be thirty-seven now, the same age as my mother—but unlike her, he looked a decade older than his real age, instead of a decade younger. He still appeared to be in excellent physical condition, but his once dark hair was now shot through with gray, and there were prominent crow’s-feet around his eyes, which were the same exact shade of blue as my own. A hardened weariness seemed to permeate his features, and I wondered if I was getting a glimpse of what my face would look like, if I somehow lived to be his age.
I was still wondering that when I realized he was already moving toward me, closing the narrow distance between us, and then his arms were suddenly wrapped around me.
A dam ruptured somewhere in my chest, and a torrent of feelings came rushing out of me all at once. I buried my face against his chest, and this triggered a long-dormant sense memory: the sensation of my father holding me just like this, when I was still an infant. It may have even been my memory of the very last time he’d held me, before he’d vanished from my life forever.
No, not forever, I told myself. Until right now.
“I’m so happy to see you, Zack,” he whispered, with a slight tremor in his voice. “And I’m sorry—so sorry for leaving you and your mother. I never imagined that I would be gone for so long.”
Each word he spoke made my heart swell, until it felt as if it might burst. In one breath, my father had just said all of things I’d always dreamed of hearing him tell me, back when I’d still allowed myself to fantasize about him still being alive. And I was too overwhelmed to respond. Part of me was still sure that all of this was some sort of precarious dream, and that if I said or did the wrong thing, I would wake up now, at the worst possible time.
I tried again to speak, to tell him I’d been dreaming of this moment my entire life. But I still couldn’t find my voice. My father seemed to take my continued silence as a negative sign. He let go of me and stepped back; then he began to study my face, trying to decipher whatever dazed expression he saw there.
“I’ve been waiting eighteen years to tell you all of that, Zack,” he said quietly. “I’ve practiced saying it in my head a million times. I hope I got it right. I hope I didn’t screw it up.”
Absurdly, I found myself wishing that my mother were here, so she could introduce me to this complete stranger who was wearing my face.
“You didn’t,” I finally managed to say, nearly inaudible. Then I cleared my throat and tried again. “You didn’t screw it up,” I said cautiously. “I’m happy to see you, too.”
My father exhaled.
“I’m relieved to hear that,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you would be.” He smiled nervously. “You have every right to be angry, and I know you’ve got a temper, so—”
He stopped speaking when he saw my smile vanish. Then he winced and contorted his brow—the exact same way I always did when I said something and instantly regretted it.
“How could you possibly know if I’ve ‘got a temper’?” I asked, the anger rising in my voice like mercury. My father laughed involuntarily at the irony of my response, but it was lost on me, and his reaction only made me feel even more hurt and pissed off. Somehow, all of the excitement and euphoria I’d felt upon meeting him had dissipated in the span of a few seconds. “What makes you think you know anything about me at all?”
“I’m sorry, Zack,” he said. “But I’m your new commanding officer. I read over your EDA recruit profile, and it contains all of your civilian school and police records.”
“All of my private psych evaluation results, too, I’ll bet.”
He nodded. “The EDA finds out everything they can about potential recruits.”
I nodded. “Did my ‘recruit profile’ mention that my anger-management issues might be linked to the tragic death of my father in a shit-factory explosion when I was ten months old?”
The question clearly hurt him, but I couldn’t help but twist the knife a little farther.
“What do you think it was like for me, growing up believing that’s how my father died?” I asked. “And having everyone in the whole town believe it, too? Were you trying to ruin my life? Couldn’t you have pretended to die in a fucking car accident or something instead?”