Dressed in worn-out work clothes, Edmund planned to show up unannounced and catch Atticus with his guard down. He needed to know whether he truly loved his daughter or was just chasing the family fortune.
When he arrived at his place, it was far worse than anything Edmund had pictured. The house was practically falling apart, with a yard that looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. Empty liquor bottles and cigarette butts were scattered across the porch as he made his way to the entrance. There’s not a chance Priscilla has ever set foot here, Edmund thought – he was absolutely sure of it. His daughter would never have fallen for someone living in these conditions.
Every instinct told him to turn around and leave, but he had come this far. He steadied himself, lifted his hand, and pressed the doorbell.
The Man Who Answered
The door opened six inches. A chain stayed on.
A man’s face appeared in the gap. Mid-thirties maybe. Hair that hadn’t seen a comb in days. Eyes that looked like they’d given up on sleep somewhere around 2019.
“Yeah?”
Edmund put on his best working-class voice. The one he used with contractors when he didn’t want them padding the estimate.
“Afternoon. Name’s Ed. Heard you might need some work done around the place. Handyman. Reasonable rates.”
The man blinked. Looked Edmund up and down. The stained Carhartt jacket. The boots with actual mud on them. The toolbox Edmund had bought at a pawn shop that morning for twenty-three dollars.
“I didn’t call anybody.”
“No, sir, you didn’t. But a fella at the hardware store mentioned this address. Said the place needed some love. I was in the neighborhood.”
A long pause. Then the chain slid free.
“Come on in. But I’m telling you now, I can’t pay much.”
The door swung wide.
The Inside Was Worse
The smell hit first. Stale cigarettes and something sour underneath. Like milk left out too long. The living room had a couch with the springs showing through and a coffee table made of milk crates and a piece of plywood.
But the walls.
The walls were covered in photographs. Black and white mostly. Landscapes. Street scenes. An old woman’s hands folded in her lap. The kind of pictures that made you stop and look. Really look.
“These yours?” Edmund asked.
Atticus was already walking toward the kitchen. “Yeah. Darkroom’s in the bathroom. Don’t go in there. The chemicals’ll knock you out.”
Edmund followed him. The kitchen had dishes piled in the sink and a refrigerator that hummed like it was on its last legs. But on the counter, next to a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, was a framed photo of Priscilla.
She was laughing. Hair down. The way she looked when she didn’t know anyone was watching.
“That your girlfriend?”
Atticus glanced at the photo. Something moved across his face. Quick. Then gone.
“Fiancée.”
“Pretty girl.”
“Yeah.” He pulled a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket. Tapped one out. “She’s way out of my league.”
Edmund almost broke character right there.
The Job That Wasn’t A Job
“I can start with that back porch,” Edmund said. “Boards are rotting. Someone’s gonna put a foot through.”
“I know. I’ve been meaning to – ” Atticus stopped. Rubbed his face with both hands. “Look, man. I’m not gonna waste your time. I got maybe forty bucks to my name until Friday. And Friday’s not looking great either.”
“What do you do for work?”
“I’m a photographer. Or I was. Newspaper laid me off six months ago. Since then I’ve been shooting weddings. Senior portraits. Whatever pays.” He lit the cigarette. “Turns out ‘whatever pays’ doesn’t pay much.”
Edmund set his toolbox on the counter. “What newspaper?”
“Tribune. Fifteen years. Won a goddamn Pulitzer in 2018 for a series on the homeless camps under the overpass.” He laughed. No humor in it. “You know what a Pulitzer pays? A plaque. They don’t mention that part.”
Edmund knew. He’d read those pieces. He’d even donated to one of the shelters after.
“The house,” Edmund said carefully. “It’s not in great shape.”
“My mother’s. She died two years ago. Cancer. Left me the house and about eighty thousand in medical debt.” He took a long drag. “I’ve been selling things off. The furniture. Her jewelry. Anything that’ll keep the lights on another month.”
“Your fiancée know about all this?”
Atticus went still.
The Silence That Followed
“Who are you?” he said.
“What?”
“You’re not a handyman.” His voice was quiet. Not angry. Just tired. “Handymen don’t ask questions like that. They quote a price and they leave.”
Edmund considered lying. He’d been lying for thirty minutes. What was another lie?
But something in the man’s face stopped him. The way he’d looked at Priscilla’s photo. The exhaustion in his shoulders.
“I’m her father.”
Atticus didn’t move.
“Edmund,” he said. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“Priscilla showed me pictures. You don’t look anything like – ” He stopped. Looked at the toolbox. The muddy boots. “You dressed up.”
“I wanted to see who you really were.”
“And what’d you find?”
Edmund looked around the kitchen. The dishes. The whiskey. The photograph of his daughter laughing.
“I don’t know yet.”
The Photograph On The Refrigerator
There was a picture stuck to the fridge with a magnet from a pizza place. Edmund hadn’t noticed it before. Priscilla and Atticus together. She was wearing an old sweatshirt and no makeup. He had his arm around her and they were both looking at something off-camera.
She looked happy. Not the polished happy she wore at family dinners. The real thing.
“That was at the lake,” Atticus said. “She wanted to see where I grew up. I told her it wasn’t much. She said she didn’t care.”
“She’s always been like that.”
“I know.” He stubbed out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. “I keep waiting for her to figure out she can do better.”
“And what would she be figuring out exactly?”
Atticus turned. Faced Edmund directly for the first time.
“That I’m broke. That the house is falling apart. That I drink too much and I don’t sleep and some days I can’t get out of bed because the whole thing feels like a hole I can’t climb out of.” His voice cracked. “She knows all of it. I’ve told her. Every ugly thing. And she stays.”
Edmund didn’t say anything.
“She says she doesn’t want your money,” Atticus continued. “She says she wants to build something with me. From scratch. Can you believe that? A woman like her, with everything she could have, and she wants to build something from scratch with a broke photographer who can’t even fix his own porch.”
What Edmund Didn’t Say
He didn’t tell Atticus about his own father. A factory worker who’d come home with bleeding hands and a back that gave out at fifty-two.
He didn’t tell him about the years he’d spent building his company. The nights on office floors because he couldn’t afford a hotel. The deals that almost fell through. The wife who left because he worked too much and came home too tired to be a husband.
He didn’t tell him that he’d started with less than Atticus had now.
Instead he said, “Does she know about the drinking?”
Atticus flinched. “She knows I drink. She doesn’t know how much.”
“You planning to tell her?”
“I’m planning to stop.”
“Men always plan to stop.”
“I’m not – ” Atticus stopped. Swallowed. “I’m not trying to be one of those men. The ones who make promises and break them. She deserves better than that.”
Edmund picked up his toolbox.
“Where are you going?”
“The porch,” Edmund said. “Those boards are a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
The Afternoon
They worked together. Edmund had the skills but Atticus had the strength. He hauled the rotten boards to the curb while Edmund cut the new ones. They didn’t talk much. Just the sound of the saw and the hammer and the crows fighting in the yard next door.
Around five, Atticus brought out two beers.
“I know you saw the whiskey,” he said. “This is my first drink since you got here.”
Edmund took the beer.
“Priscilla’s mother died when she was twelve,” he said. “Brain aneurysm. No warning. She was fine at breakfast and gone by dinner.”
Atticus didn’t say he was sorry. Edmund appreciated that.
“For a long time after,” Edmund continued, “I tried to control everything. Her friends. Her grades. Who she dated. I thought if I could just keep everything in place, nothing bad would happen to her.”
“How’d that work out?”
“She moved out at eighteen. Didn’t speak to me for two years.” He took a drink. “I learned something. Eventually. You can’t protect them by building walls. You just teach them to hide things from you.”
Atticus was quiet.
“She’s not hiding you,” Edmund said. “That counts for something.”
The Photographs In The Bathroom
Before he left, Edmund asked to see the darkroom.
It was cramped. A tiny bathroom with the window blacked out and clotheslines strung across the shower rod. Photographs hung everywhere. Drying.
But it was the ones on the wall that stopped him. A series. Same subject. Different days.
A homeless man on a park bench. In the first photo, he was sleeping. In the second, he was eating a sandwich. In the third, he was laughing at something off-camera. In the fourth, his bench was empty. A single shoe left behind.
“You kept going back,” Edmund said.
“Six weeks. His name was Walter. He’d been an English teacher. Lost his job, lost his house, lost his wife. The cancer. Same as my mother.” Atticus leaned against the doorframe. “I wanted people to see him. Not just a homeless guy. A person.”
“Is this the series that won?”
“No. That one was about the camps. This one I did after. Nobody published it.”
“Why not?”
“They said it was too sad.” He laughed that same humorless laugh. “The truth usually is.”
The Drive Home
Edmund sat in his car for a long time before he started the engine.
He thought about his daughter. The way she’d looked when she told him about Atticus. Nervous but defiant. Ready for a fight.
He’d given her one. Said all the things a protective father says. Background check this. Prenup that. How do you know he’s not after the money?
And she’d said, “Daddy, I love him. Isn’t that enough?”
He hadn’t answered.
Now he pulled out his phone. Stared at her name in his contacts.
Then he typed: I met him. He’s not what I expected. Come to dinner Friday. Bring Atticus.
He almost added something else. Something about the drinking. The house. The debt.
But he didn’t.
She already knew all of it. And she’d chosen him anyway.
Maybe that was the point.
What He Told Her
Friday came. Priscilla walked through the door in a blue dress, Atticus behind her in a jacket that didn’t quite fit and shoes he’d obviously shined that morning.
Edmund shook his hand. “Good to see you again.”
Priscilla’s head snapped around. “Again?”
Atticus went red.
“Your father came by the house a few days ago,” he said. “Dressed like a handyman. Asked a lot of questions.”
“You did what?”
“I was being careful,” Edmund said.
“That’s not careful, Daddy. That’s insane.”
“Maybe.” He looked at Atticus. “But I learned what I needed to learn.”
“And what’s that?”
Edmund walked to the dining room. The table was set for three.
“That he loves you,” he said. “And that he’s got a hell of a eye for a photograph.”
Priscilla stared at him. Atticus stared at him.
“Well,” Edmund said, pulling out a chair. “Are we going to eat or not?”
They ate. The roast was dry. The conversation was awkward. But they stayed at the table for three hours.
And when Atticus mentioned he was looking for a darkroom space since the bathroom was getting cramped, Edmund said he might know a place. A commercial space he owned downtown. Empty for two years.
“Rent would be reasonable,” he said.
“I can’t afford – “
“Reasonable,” Edmund repeated. “We can discuss it.”
Priscilla reached under the table and took Atticus’s hand.
Edmund pretended not to notice.
But he did.
If this one got you thinking about the people we misjudge, pass it along to someone who needs the reminder.
If you enjoyed this wild tale, you might also like to read about how I followed my husband to his manager’s house and opened the door or how I married a fisherman’s daughter to spite my parents. And for another story about uncovering family secrets, check out my partner’s son was up before dawn doing chores – then he told me why.
