Member-only story
My Children’s Father Doesn’t Remember Them
It was an accident, so they say.
August 2020
He was so proud of that car. He had gotten a loan on it; it was the newest thing he had ever owned, only a year old. He had been so particular back when he would come to pick the kids up, changing Rain’s shoes and wiping the mud off Baby Li’s feet before putting them in.
He is particular about a lot of things. “I’m becoming more OCD,” he will later tell me.
He is a good driver, too. Atlas is never careless; in ten years he never even had so much as a close call when he was behind the wheel. Not a single fender bender, not a single insurance claim. He had wrecked a car once, before I knew him, but he was a very new driver then.
So it seems kind of out of the blue when M texts me, without preamble, to tell me that Atlas is in the hospital after a car accident.
I am immediately horrified. Despite everything, I hold no animosity toward Atlas; staying on speaking terms has been a goal almost since I left. It doesn’t make me feel like he has gotten his just desserts when I learn that he drove that almost new car he was so happy with off the side of the hill and into a ditch some 20 or 30 feet below.
