“Favourite colour? No idea. But his darkest secrets? Those I knew well.”

It’s the line I’ve used for years, whenever someone brings him up. A shrug. A half-smile. A joke just sharp enough to pass as wit, just true enough to leave a mark.

Because what else do you say about a father who was never quite there, but never quite gone?

He wasn’t awful. He didn’t scream or vanish into some cliché. He just... drifted.

Quietly. Carefully.

The kind of absence that doesn’t make headlines, it makes dents.

Small ones. Accumulating.

People said he was a good guy. They weren’t wrong. He held doors open for strangers. He remembered baristas’ names. He sent birthday messages two days late but always with an exclamation mark and a smiley face.

He meant well. That was the worst part of it.

He meant well, and still he left.

When I was a child, all I wanted was to reach him. I felt lonely and angry, confused about what I might have done to cause the growing distance between us. I saw my friends’ fathers show up for them, celebrate their small wins, cheer from the sidelines at games. I kept wondering how I could become more for him to notice.

Prettier. Smarter. Kinder.

A better daughter.

Maybe then he’d see me as someone worthy of the kind of love that came so easily to others.

But love, it seemed, was never that simple.

I covered for him. I grew into it, like a second skin. Told my Mum he must’ve gotten caught up with work. Told my friends he was super busy. Told myself that maybe he just didn’t know how to love the right way, but he wanted to.

And wasn’t that enough?

I used to think I knew him better than anyone. I imagined that meant something. That my loyalty would tether him to me, eventually. That if I gave enough patience, silence, forgiveness he’d turn around and stay.

As I grew older, I became more emotionally mature than he ever seemed to be, slowly understanding that he was fumbling through his own confusion and fears, no more certain about how to love than I was.

So no, I didn’t know his favourite colour.

But his darkest secrets? Those I knew well.

I knew how he avoided depth like it burned. I knew how he changed the subject when emotions got too close to the surface. I knew how he smiled through guilt, unsure how to connect. How he confused kindness with care. How he made quiet disappearances seem gentle.

I was twenty-four the last time I saw him. He said he was in town. Said he wanted to catch up. We went for coffee. Talked like acquaintances. He asked what I was reading. I asked if he was still renovating his house. He said no. We both pretended that was enough.

He hugged me goodbye and said, “I’m proud of you, you know.”

And I nodded.

And he left.

Again.

I used to hold on to that moment like it was proof of love, of intent, of something. But now, I see it for what it was: a man trying, just enough to feel good about himself. Not enough to stay.

And I don’t hate him. I really don’t.

But I’ve stopped explaining him. Stopped bending myself into metaphors just to make the shape of his absence more palatable. Some people are good. Some people are kind. And still, some people cannot show up for you.

He remarried, a few years after that last coffee. I heard through someone else. Too scared to tell me himself, maybe because he knew I’d never really liked her when I was younger. And maybe because it’s too hard to have a conversation like that with someone you don’t really know but should care about. It was easier to leave me out of it.

Out of the photo. Out of the ceremony. Out of the life.

I sent him an invitation to my wedding. Slipped it into a clean white envelope with his name in neat ink. He never RSVP’d.

Not yes, not no.

Just silence.

Like so many other things.

When he got sick, I thought about visiting. I thought about reaching out, about offering some kind of soft ending to our story. But it felt disingenuous. Like trying to build a bridge on a foundation that was never there.

So, I didn’t.

And when he died, I grieved in the same quiet, invisible way I had grieved him my whole life.

Some people are afraid of being known, even by their own children.

And me? I’m learning to want more than that. I’m learning to be more than the girl who kept the silence for him. More than the echo of his choices.

I still don’t know his favourite colour.

But mine is blue. It always has been.

And maybe, finally, that’s enough.