Mystical dad.

The only thing I ever got off my old man was a handwritten birthday card and a doll when I was ten. He'd gone off when I was three and left me and mum and my sister to fend for ourselves. Mum never talks about him but my sister remembers him.

     ‘What was dad like?' I ask.

     She looks at me through dark, sleepy eyes, pushes her braided hair back from her eyes. Her arms are scabbed like she's been shinning up a rusty drainpipe and accidentally slid back down and scraped herself. ‘Whu?'

     ‘I said, what was dad like?'

     She smiles at me, and I assume that she's ignoring me and I should ask her later when she's in the mood.
     Anyhow, the only thing I ever got from him was a birthday card when I was ten. It said Happy Birthday Julie! And then there was a verse inside the card that went:
 

Now you're ten, and how you've grown
It really won't be long
‘Til you're a woman, and fully grown
With your family and independence.

 
     And on the front of the card was a picture, a cartoon, of a little girl wearing a hardhat and watering flowers. But I mean, how would he know I'd grown? To be honest, I was surprised he knew where I was, we moved so often.
 
But the killer was, at the bottom of the card, below the rhyme, he'd added:
 

Remember, no one's got your back
XX. Dad.

 
     I'd studied this card on more than one occasion, trying to work out some depth to what he was telling me. ‘Laura, what was dad like?'
     Three hours later and she's washing up. The dutiful daughter. She looked up a little, thought about my question for a second or two. Then she said, ‘I love him. Still.'