143

There's a science to getting the best amount of ketchup onto a burger in Anna's mind. You draw a smiley face, just like her mother did.

If only her mother had been able to draw her own smile on her face. There was something eerie about staying in the house that her mother had offed herself in. Her room was shut, left as she had left it, immaculate, save for the note on her bedside table. A simple 143 in her chicken scratch, on the back of her receipt, as if she had waited until the last moment to tell her daughter she loved her. That had been their language. 

"I want you home by 1:43," she'd say, or "I'm making potatoes for dinner, with 143 pieces of shredded cheese," as she would leave the house. Love was a hard word for her after her husband had left. 

Anna didn't remember anything about her father. He had left when she was four. Her mother had been open with her, saying that he had left for another woman, across the seas. She called him a word that she told her daughter not to repeat to her friends.

She did, and the teacher had to call her mother. That's when she realized just how bad her father must be. She too, decided that he was a bad man, and spent many Father's Days celebrations sitting in the back by herself. 

At some point around her fifth birthday, a card came addressed to her in the mail. It was from someone who shared her last name overseas. She had noticed it on the table, but upon reaching for it, her mother had called her name, distracting her. By the time she remembered, the letter was gone. 

She'd asked her mother about it a few days later.

"It's from your grandmother. Says your old man died in a car crash. Sends her condolences." 

Quickly after, her mother had announced they were moving across the country. It was a quaint town, where everybody knew your name and business.

Right now, her business was making lunch. A burger, because she was sick of eating casserole brought over by the neighbors after the funeral. She was in the middle of squeezing out the perfect ketchup smile when she heard a sharp knock.

Startled, the ketchup splurted out of the bottle. 

Abandoning her lunch to get the door, she opened it to find a stranger. It was peculiar, given the town wasn't known for visitors, so she held the door between them. "Hi."

"Anna, is that really you?" The man reached towards her. She nodded curtly in response. When he didn't give any indication as to who he was, her curiosity got the better of her.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Her burger was getting cold, and so was she, standing in the doorway with the winter breeze.

He pulled off his hat, rubbing his balding head. "I suppose not. It's been twenty years since you last saw me. I tried to find you, but your mother changed address, and well, Smith is kind of a common last name."

Her mother had reverted to her maiden name when they moved. She said she didn't want her past following her, just a fresh start. One that apparently she hadn't gotten, as someone had known her well enough to track her down many states over.

"So I've noticed."

"I tried to look you up, but well, with a name like Anna Smith, you can see how finding information about you would be impossible." The kids had teased her about being the Playboy model's evil twin. Fraternal, as she was a flat chested ugly duckling who had thankfully morphed into some semblance of a woman by her early twenties.

"Is there something I can help you with?" She was getting hungrier by the second, but going for the cold hamburger would require shutting the door that he had smartly wedged his foot in.

He exhaled and rubbed his mitted hands together for warmth. "I think this is a conversation we should have inside. It's quite nippy out here."

She searched his body for any kind of weapon. At most he could strangle her with his scarf from what she could tell. Besides, the sooner he left, the sooner she could eat.

Letting him in, she quickly shut the cold out behind him, walking to the kitchen. 

"Would you like a cup of tea to warm up?" The kettle too had gone luke warm in her absence. 

"If you'd be so kind." He set his mittens on the counter, eyeballing her burger. "You really are just like your mother, you know."

Reigniting the burner, she studied his face. Her mind was drawing a blank on who this man could have been.

"How do you figure?" 

"The ketchup. The hair. The rooster decor. They always stared at me when I was making pancakes, creepy little birds. No offense." He turned the bird away.

"Not my roosters. I haven't been up to boxing up all of her things yet." She racked her memory for pancakes at home. Her mother had always taken her to IHOP on the first Saturday of the month before their big grocery trips. She never made them at home, because 'you don't mess with tradition.'

Evidently tradition had been messed with already. 

He stared at her as she poured the water into the mugs. "You have my eyes though. Judging by that guitar over there, you inherited my love of music too, unless that was also your mother's?"

She burnt her hand on the kettle.

There was no way.

"What are you saying?"

"I said you have my eyes and-"

"No, the inheritance thing."

"Daughters tend to inherit traits from their mothers and fathers, Anna."

She stopped toying with her tea bag. 

"I'm sorry, who did you say you were again?"

"Anna, I'm your father."

Great, now she'd burnt her foot with the tea bag.

"My father is dead."

"No I'm not." He picked the bag off her foot and tossed it into the trash. "As far as I'm aware, and I'd like to think I'm the authority on myself, wouldn't you?"

She sank to the floor, and he met her down there, bringing the tea with him. He popped back up to grab the burger, handing it to her.

"No thanks," she said, handing it back.

He shrugged and took a bite. Chewing for longer than necessary, he finally found his words.

"What exactly did your mother tell you?" 

"She said you ran off to be with another woman across the sea, and that you died around my fifth birthday. Amongst other things." 

"That other woman was your dying aunt. Our parents were too old to take care of her, and your mother refused to come to Europe. Said she had too much going for her in the city. Which must've changed considering you ended up in the middle of nowhere."

Anna froze, watching the man eat her burger. She didn't know truth from lie anymore, and her mother wasn't around to give her side of his story. She hardly knew his, beyond that afternoon, wiping ketchup off his chin on her kitchen floor.

"How did you find me then?"

"Her obituary came up when I searched for your names. Made a few calls, a lot actually, and took a chance. I want to get to know you, Anna. I've waited twenty years."

She sipped at her tea. 

"I'm a bit in shock." 

"Take your time. I've got nowhere to be." He took a swig from his mug. "Perks of being retired."

He had all the time in the world for her. 

He wasn't going to lose her this time.

She thought for a minute, glancing around the empty house. It had been so quiet all by herself, bumbling through the month, passing by that closed door. 

"Yes you do."

"I do?"

The clock struck 1:43.

"You've got to be somewhere. You've got to be right here."