Ava had gone to her foster home. Somewhere deep in my bones, there was an ache I couldn’t warm, and it wasn’t from the wintry weather. I had been convinced she wanted to see Sarah’s grave, to spend time with her mother even though she didn’t truly remember her.

How foolish I’d been.

Of course she retreated to the only family she’d known before me. Of course she thought of them as a refuge, not Sarah’s grave. That thinking had been my delusion, not Ava’s reality.

Even so, accepting the fact she’d run away was harder than I ever thought possible. Charlotte’s hand was the only thing keeping me anchored to reality. Without her smooth, warm skin pressed against mine, I was sure I would implode, my body’s remains scattered in a gust of wind.

She kept me grounded. Awake. Present, even though I wanted so desperately to retreat, to lick my wounds and accept Ava’s running away as a sign that I was failing her. That I was a failure, not a father.

“Jack, she loves you,” said Charlotte.

What did she know?

From the outside, you could never tell what a child was thinking. Maybe you could glean information about their feelings if they wore them on their sleeves, but thoughts? Those were just hints and glimmers on the best of days.

I shouldn’t have written those things in the first place. Shouldn’t have used a piece of paper as my therapist, rather than actual, flesh and blood people who could have helped me. I was too stubborn, too proud to accept that I’d been living a half-there life for years.

I’d told myself that writing to Sarah helped ease the pain, but in reality it kept me chained to her long past the point of healing.

Yes, I’d always love her. Yes, I wanted her to be a part of my life forever.

She would be.

But she couldn’t be the blank page I poured my feelings into anymore. I had real, caring people around me now, whose ears and eyes were trained on me when I needed help and who’d reach out and try to lift me up if only I’d let them.

Let them in, Jack. For once in your goddamn life stop being such a bear.

“I’m afraid she doesn’t know how much I love her,” I said, voice shaking as I drove out of the cemetery parking lot while Charlotte scanned my face with wide, empathetic eyes.

We zoomed along the side streets that brought us to the freeway, sped in the far-left lane to get to where we could reunite with Ava. Sweet, precious Ava.

And Charlotte squeezed my upper arm, her gaze never leaving my face. “She does, Jack. She may not always have good days, cause life is tough, but she always, always has you. I know that she knows that. I can see it in her progress as a painter, her eagerness to make something you’d like.”

My heart felt heavy, like it would drop through my chest and into the seat below me. The constriction in my throat worsened as we got closer to the foster home. When they’d given me the address, I’d been surprised to learn it was in one of the fancier neighborhoods in town.

I recognized now that part of the surprise was jealousy. How ridiculous was that? A world-famous millionaire and biological father of the child, reduced to petty feelings over an address. Sure, I’d bought a modest home in a quiet suburb to lay low, but if I’d wanted to I could have purchased half the neighborhood we were now driving into.

I needn’t have been envious of the foster parents, Dale and Candace. They were waiting at their front window when we pulled into the driveway, obvious concern on their faces. When Charlotte and I got out of the car and approached the door, we didn’t even need to knock. They opened it right up and stood there, empathy radiating off their pleasant faces.

These were the kind of people who should foster children.

Ava had been lucky, I knew that.

It could have easily been an abusive family she was left with, and that would have been my fault as much as anything. The thought ricocheted around my brain while Dale introduced himself to Charlotte.

“And you must be Jack,” he said, moments later.

I nodded.

“It’s great to finally meet you,” added Candace. Her smile appeared to be sincere, though I felt another twinge of guilt thinking that they wouldn’t have been involved in my life if I hadn’t fucked it up quite so badly.

There was never going to be a time when that didn’t bother me.

I had to learn to accept my failings and move past them, rather than dwell on them.

So I pushed my self-castigation down, let it swim with the stomach acid swirling around my empty stomach, which now growled at a volume that would have embarrassed me in other circumstances.

“She’s inside,” murmured Candace. “You must be hungry, why don’t you both come in and you can chat?”

I wanted nothing more than to find Ava, to reunite with her and then be on our way, but Charlotte immediately agreed. She was still far too good of a person.

“Ava,” called Dale. “Your dad is here to see you. Is that ok?”

I hadn’t thought of the possibility she might say no. The sudden fear chilled my skin and sent a tingle up the back of my neck. But I heard a quiet yes, the sullen words those of a reluctantly found-out runaway.

Something in Ava’s tone, her grumpy and self-pitying demeanor, it reminded me of myself.

I had to do better. Not just for me, but for the both of us. So I could be an example to my daughter of a happy, optimistic adult. Someone she should be like.

So I smiled despite my feelings, walked into the room without the anger and fear that had driven me through the morning.

“Hey Ava,” I said. Candace and Dale were already rummaging through the kitchen to find the cheese and snack crackers they then set out on the dining room table where Ava sat. My daughter was staring off into space, her shoulders drawn and her head hanging lower than normal.

If I weren’t mistaken, she looked guilty. I knew that unhappiness drove her from our house, but perhaps she’d been regretting the decision to run away. I was certain many children did, when their meagre ‘supplies’ ran out or they missed the comforts of home.

My Ava was different, though. She had good reason to be upset, and I couldn’t pretend that this was just about some squabble over chores. Our shared history was rocky enough to justify all sorts of flights from home.

Dale and Candace served us snack food, and then judged the sentiment in the room to be charged enough that they’d be better off elsewhere. I was grateful that they gave us space, even though I was embarrassed to need it.

Charlotte sat closer to Ava while I chose the spot across from her.

“Sweetie,” said Charlotte, “What’s wrong?”

Ava raised her face towards Charlotte. She bit her lip, hesitating for a second, and then spoke.

“He doesn’t want me.”

Pure, unadulterated pain shot through my stomach in a white-hot lightning bolt. I was speechless.

Of course I wanted her.

“What makes you say that, Ava?” asked Charlotte.

“I saw his journal.”

Ava was pulling at the loose threads at the edge of her sleeve, tearing up the tufts where she sometimes chewed while reading. It was a mindless activity on good days, but this morning it showed such clear anxiety I kicked myself for not taking her to a child psychologist.

She probably needed someone to talk to.

Hell, I knew I did.

“Ava, your dad’s journal is a place where he works through all sorts of ideas, his thoughts and feelings. He would never say anything that’s in there to you, just like you’d never…paint his face while he’s sleeping.”

Ava smiled a little at Charlotte’s bizarre comparison, but the clouds returned to darken her face once more.

“But he said he didn’t want to live.”

Her voice was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear her, but I knew which pages she was referring to. I knew which journal entries, tortured and written in a haze, she would have seen. It hurt more than I could bear.

“Ava, honey, no,” I said. My voice was so choked with emotion she looked surprised. Tears welled up despite myself, streaming down my cheeks as if they’d been ready for years. Really, they had been.

“That isn’t a reflection of you,” said Charlotte. “It’s really, really hard to lose someone you love, and your dad would never want to lose you again. I saw that today when we went out looking for you. He needs you, just like you need him.”

I was trembling at the end of the table, my palms moistening the wood surface while I broke out in a nervous sweat. It was as if every bit of moisture in my body needed to leave me, whether it was through sweat or tears. Ava met my eye and her eyes started watering along with me.

“Daddy, I don’t want you to die,” she whispered.

Her words nearly broke me. If I hadn’t had Charlotte there, if I hadn’t known that she would catch me whenever I fell down, no matter how little I thought I deserved it, I’d have collapsed on the linoleum right then and never left. Dale and Candace would have had to call in some mobile crisis unit and have me shipped away to cope with a breakdown.

As it stood, I barely held onto my emotions, barely kept myself from complete ruin.

Instead of a breath, I shook with the ragged kind of exhalation that you more frequently heard from the dying. The air seemed to make little difference, but my body wasn’t willing to give up on me yet.

Neither was Charlotte. She stood and came directly to me, her warm, loving hands held on my shoulders for the seconds I needed before I could stand. I had to go to Ava. She sat there at the other end of the table, tears streaming down her beautiful little face, eyes more sad than anyone’s should be at that age.

She’d lost so much.

Lived through so much, too.

I knew right then that I would do anything I could to make her forget the pain of today. Burn my journal, never play another note on my bass, move to Antarctica. Whatever she needed, I would give. Whenever she wanted me to do something, I would do it.

All of the uncertainty I’d felt at coming back to Minneapolis vanished in a puff. This was my home, Ava’s home, and we were exactly where we needed to be.

Charlotte helped me stand up and go to Ava, whose eyes still wouldn’t meet mine. She glanced at my eyebrows, focused in fleeting glimpses on the tears staining my cheeks and the rough edges of my beard, which was ungroomed because of the panic in the morning.

I held out my hand, unsure of whether Ava would take it. Maybe she was hurting too much. Or she might have rejected me altogether, decided I was too volatile to trust and love. I had to try, regardless.

To the relief of my screaming mind, her small palm met mine and I nearly collapsed once more, this time from gratitude. I heard the sniffling breaths coming from her teary face and I buried my cheek in her t-shirt as I hugged her more forcefully than we had ever embraced.

If this hug had any say in the matter, we would never be parted, not until she was well into her teens and eager to chart new territory as a young adult. If I could have hugged her forever, that still wouldn’t have been enough. Beneath my arms, her slender bones felt impossibly fragile.

Her heartbeat tapped at my chest, tears wicking into the fabric of my shirt.

“I don’t want to die either, Ava. I’m here. With you. And that’s all I could ever, ever want.”

“Please don’t leave me, Daddy,” she said. This time, I noticed that she called me Daddy. It was all the approval, all the affirmation I could have ever needed.

“Never, Ava. Never.”

We held each other for a full minute, parting only when Ava’s streaming nose became too noticeable to ignore. Charlotte dabbed at her with a tissue, her hand resting on my arm while she stood nearby. There was an energy flowing between us all, something having changed by the crisis we’d just lived through.

Dale and Candace, wisely sensing that important bonding was happening, left us to ourselves. But when we re-emerged, they quietly told me that I could call whenever I needed to, and that they weren’t the least bit put out by Ava’s showing up at their doorstep.

I thanked the universe for the luck of Ava having lived with them. She’d been in good hands, and that was more than I could have said for myself. Something had shifted inside me, though, and I felt a clarity I hadn’t had in years. No more sadness, no more lingering doubts about myself, my place in the world.

My heart had crystallized that morning, and Charlotte, Ava, and I left the neighbourhood chastened, quiet, but connected in some ineffable way I couldn’t express.

Ava was coming home, and we were a family.