She had never wanted it to happen this way.
For years she had told everyone that her father was dead. It was easier. Safer. No one asked questions, no one looked at her with pity or suspicion. At school she was “the quiet girl,” the one who didn’t talk much, who kept her head down.
The truth was different.
Her father had returned from the war… but he had never truly come back.
When he left, she was ten years old. He had promised he would return soon. That he would take her to school. That he would protect her from everything. Then came the years of silence, the nights of fear, the muffled screams behind closed doors.
That day, in the school courtyard, everything collapsed.
A man in a military uniform walked through the gate. His steps rigid. His gaze cold. The teachers froze. The students turned around. No one understood what was happening.
She did.
Her legs gave way.
She dropped to her knees in front of everyone, clutching her face in her hands, unable to breathe. Her classmates formed a circle around her, confused, motionless. Her backpack fell to the ground, notebooks scattering across the asphalt.
He stopped in front of her.
He didn’t hug her.
He didn’t say her name.
He only said:
“Get up. Don’t make a scene.”
Those words struck her harder than any of the screams from the past.
In that moment she understood something she had always tried to avoid: it wasn’t the war that had changed him. He had always been this way. And she had never been safe.
That day she didn’t cry because her father had returned.
She cried because she realized he would never become the man she had waited for all those years.
Sometimes, the return you fear the most…
is the one that confirms all your fears.