A World Without You

He comes back to stand in my closet sometimes, a shadow in the open door. He tells me stories. There was a boy. He lived at the lake, and he was Dad's friend.

"What was his name?" I ask him.

Dad doesn't look at me. He looks anywhere else, and finally he says, "Franklin."

"What happened to him?"

Dad looks down at me and smiles, his eyes the color of the lake at night, dark and bottomless. "I don’t know."

"Come on, Dad. I want to know."

"No you don't," he tells me, and he tucks me in. But this time, he doesn’t go away.

"Dad, why did you go away?"

"You're tired," he says, and I can't stay awake anymore. I wake up a couple times, and he's still sitting there, holding down the corner of my mattress.