For two years, I walked my neighbor’s daughter to school. She called me Daddy. Then one morning, a man showed up, grabbed her hand, and told me he had a deal that changed everything.
Two years ago, after a night shift, I heard a child crying behind an apartment building. Knees pulled to her chest, uniform messy, backpack on the ground—she looked lost.
“They’re all gonna have their dads,” she said. “Today is daddy-daughter day. I don’t have anybody.”
Her story hit me harder than I expected. My own life had collapsed decades earlier—my fiancée left me the week before our wedding, pregnant by someone else. I’d spent thirty years alone, pretending the emptiness wasn’t there.
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