Name: Zachary Addy
His secret: His still finds himself waiting for his dad to come home.
They probably think he doesn't remember. He was only four years old, after all.
But he does.
He remembers clasping his hands over his ears in the middle of the night as he huddled beneath his rocket ship sheets to drown out the sounds of fighting and crying. He remembers the bottles he'd find poorly hidden behind furniture and in cabinets.
But mostly, he remembers the day his dad left.
He remembers sitting up in the attic – his special place – and watching his dad drive off in the red Mazda with the peeling red paint. He remembers having a four-year-old optimism about the whole situation, never once believing his dad was gone forever.
He remembers getting older, and spending more and more time in the attic, staring down the road, looking for that shoddy red car his father had loved so much, with the clattering engine you could hear from a mile away. He remembers crying there, at that window, the day it finally dawned on him that his dad wasn't coming back.
But still he waited, in that same spot, every day. It had become routine, by then.
It's been twenty years, and he still remembers.
And sometimes, he finds himself staring out the window of his place, over the tennis courts and the driveway, half expecting to see the familiar red car pull up, as if no time has passed at all.