Fiction
The Unseen Wound
Emma sat on a park bench, the autumn leaves swirling around her feet. Her phone had buzzed with a notification: a message from her estranged father, asking to meet.
He had walked out of her life when she was 12, and now, twenty years later, he wanted to talk. Emma’s heart raced. She wanted closure, but she also feared confronting the painful truths about her past.
She stared at the screen, her thumb hovering over the reply button. Meeting him could mean answers and a chance to mend the broken pieces of her past. Yet, it also meant facing the pain and abandonment she’d carried for years.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, “He doesn’t deserve your time, Emma.”
Her brother, Matt, felt the same. “He left us. We don’t owe him anything,” he often said.
But Sarah, her best friend, urged her to at least hear him out. “You might regret not knowing his side,” she had said.
Emma looked up, watching children play and elderly couples stroll hand in hand. The simplicity of New Haven had always been her anchor, her sanctuary.
Her father had left without notice, claiming he needed to find himself, but Emma suspected there was more to…
