This weekend was perfect. No screens, no stress, just five of us packed into a boat with pedals, drifting around the lake like we did when we were little.
The twins were goofing around in the front, trying to splash each other. I stretched out behind them, half listening to their laughter, half watching Daddy pedal with his calm smile. But something wasn’t right.
He kept checking his watch.
More than once. More than once and more than twice. Constantly. Like he was chasing something none of us could see.
‘Dad, chill out,’ I finally teased. ‘You have nowhere else to be.’
He smiled, but didn’t say anything back.
Later, as we paddled back to shore and the sun began to lower in the sky, I couldn’t shake the strange feeling. It wasn’t just the constant checking of his watch – it was everything about him that day. He was quieter than usual, more detached, even though he was physically right next to us. It was like he was present, but somehow…absent.
I tried to brush it off. After all, we were all together for the first time in years. Because of work, school, and everyday life, family trips were less frequent than I’d like to admit. I didn’t want to spoil my mood with unnecessary thinking. But I kept glancing at Dad as he got up to stretch and looked at his watch again, frowning slightly.
After the boat ride, we returned to the cabin, and the evening went on as usual: we laughed at dinner, played card games, and told stories about being kids. But every now and then my gaze would shift to Dad.
Only later, as we sat around the fire roasting marshmallows, did I notice that he seemed to have withdrawn even more. I caught him checking his watch again, but this time his face was more serious, more focused.
‘Dad, what’s going on?’ I asked, and the question burst out on its own before I could stop myself.
He paused, taking a slow breath. ‘Nothing, just… you know how it is. Just keeping track of time.’
There was something strange about the way he said it. He’d never been so evasive before. I exchanged a glance with my brother. Something was definitely wrong, but Dad wasn’t telling us what.
Later that night, lying in my room, I heard him moving around the kitchen. It was a soft, familiar sound – he always made himself a cup of tea before bed. But tonight it seemed different, hurried. Like he was waiting for something.
The next morning I woke up to an empty kitchen. Mum was already up, putting together the last of the breakfast dishes. The twins were arguing over the last piece of bacon. But Dad was nowhere to be found.
I figured he’d gone for a walk or a breath of fresh air. But then I noticed something strange: his watch, which he checked constantly, was on the kitchen table.
It hit me like a tonne of bricks. I’d seen him take it off the night before, and watched as he carefully placed it on the counter, just a few feet from where I stood. He hadn’t worn it that evening.
A wave of anxiety swept over me. I grabbed the watch and started looking through the back of it, hoping to find something that would explain his behaviour. And then I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before: a small engraving on the back of the watch.
It read: ‘To my dearest Jane, always waiting for you.’
The name struck me like a bolt of lightning. Jane? Who was Jane? I couldn’t remember ever having heard of Jane. I turned the watch in my hands again, trying to make sense of it.
At that moment, my mum walked in. She looked at the watch in my hands and her face went pale.
‘You need to sit down,’ she said, her voice trembling.
I carefully put the watch back down, my heart pounding frantically. Something about this moment felt wrong. I sat down at the kitchen table, waiting for Mum to explain.
‘I should have told you sooner,’ she began, her voice trembling. ‘But I couldn’t. Not like this. Your father…he wasn’t always what you thought he was.’
I felt my chest tighten. ‘What do you mean?’
She took a deep breath before continuing, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Before he met me, before you were born, he had a different life. He had a woman named Jane. They were going to get married. But something happened, and it changed everything.’
She paused, wiping her eyes with the back of her palm. ‘Jane was in an accident, a car crash. Your father did everything he could to save her, but she…she didn’t survive. He was devastated and promised her he would wait for her. But after everything… I guess he never got on with his life. He carried that promise with him all those years. Even when we were together. Even when you were born. I think he was always waiting for her to come back.’
I sat in stunned silence. Everything I thought I knew about my father, about our family, was crumbling before my eyes. He had carried this secret, this pain all these years, and none of us knew it. I couldn’t understand how he had managed to keep something so important from us, but when Mum spoke, I began to understand the depth of his grief.
‘Why didn’t you ever tell us?’ I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
‘Because,’ she replied, ’I thought he’d get over it. I thought it was just a phase. But it wasn’t. And I didn’t know how to fix it.’
The next few hours passed like a blur. I tried to make sense of everything my mother had told me, but the pieces wouldn’t fit together. My father, the man who I thought had everything in order, the man who always knew how to make me laugh, lived in the shadow of a promise made to someone I would never know. And I didn’t even realise it.
When my father finally returned, I didn’t know how to approach him. I felt betrayed, confused, and hurt, but I also felt sorry for him. He was living in the past, fixated on waiting for someone who would never come back.
That day I decided to talk to him. I didn’t know what to say, but I needed to hear it from him too. I found him on the porch, sitting alone, staring out at the horizon.
‘Dad,’ I said quietly, sitting down next to him.
He didn’t look at me at first, but I could see his shoulders tense, as if he knew what was about to happen.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Oh Jane.’
He finally turned to face me, his eyes filled with a sadness I’d never seen before. He didn’t say anything at first, just nodded slowly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I never meant to hurt you. I just…I didn’t know how to let you go.’
We sat in silence for a long time, both of us trying to find the right words.
‘I wish you had told us,’ I finally said. ‘You didn’t have to carry this alone. You didn’t have to pretend.’
‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘I thought I could move on. But I couldn’t. And now I’m sorry if I hurt you or made you feel like you weren’t enough.’
It was hard, but I understood. I understood that my father wasn’t perfect. That his grief was his burden, not mine. And while I still had questions, and I still felt the loss of the father I thought I had, I realised something important.
Sometimes people carry invisible scars on themselves. Sometimes they hold on to the past in a way that affects the present. But the most important thing is to give them the opportunity to heal, even if that healing is slow.
And so we moved forward. Not perfectly, but together. My father began to open up more, sharing parts of his past that he had hidden for so long. It wasn’t always easy, but it brought us closer together. We began to create new memories, free from the shadows of old promises.
Life isn’t always what we expect it to be, and people aren’t always who we think they are. But in the end it is the love we share that helps us heal, even in the most unexpected ways.
If this story resonated with you or if you’ve experienced something similar, please share this post and give it a like. Sometimes we all need a reminder that it’s never too late to start understanding each other more deeply.
