I sat there standing in my daughter’s now vacant and empty room, staring at the pink photo album and the note above it. My daughter's room a stark contrast to the disheveled state I had left it in; the state I left her in. I knew nothing of my youngest daughter, the note was the only thing I had that bears her name. Janet.

How? How on earth could I be so blind? Was she so good at pretending? Pretending to be a boy? Then there was the discovery that my eldest daughter and my wife knew. They kept it from me? They kept HER from me? Why? What was it that they saw in me that made them do it? Made them afraid to show me my youngest daughter. I thought we were happy. I worked so hard to keep food on the table, a roof over their heads. I wanted to make sure they became responsible adults.

I tucked her in at night. When she was too tired to pull the covers over her. Her room was that of your typical teenage boy. The only thing that would have been odd about her, was all the books on her shelves. She likes to read. She always had a book in her hand or in her backpack. I open the album, and I looked at the photos I saw yesterday. My wife, Vanessa, Janet's mother, kept the album, it was something sentimental to her. She was going to put photos of the kids growing up in there. After my wife put the first photos of Veronica in the album, I never saw it again. I figured that since we both were working and raising two kids, the album took a back seat, much like everything else in our lives. Page by page, I flipped through it. I finally stopped at the photo of Janet. She looked… happy? I had not seen a smile on her face since she was a child, a young child at that. There was never a smile on her face. Just, sadness. Perpetual sadness. I tried to reach out to her a few times. The boy, never opened up. Was I relating to her wrong? I must have.

My daughter, my youngest daughter, Janet's smile was bright. Her hazel eyes seemed to shine so invitingly. How was it that this beautiful young girl was the same sad boy that wouldn't let anyone in? How could she not share herself with me? Why? I did nothing to warrant such deception. She has her mother smile. Her mother was... just as beautiful. Seeing Janet's photo, I see a trace of the woman I fell so madly in love with. The woman I wanted to start a family with. The woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. It was the ‘rest of her life’ that I got. Her time came before mine. Sadness crosses my mind that she had a hand in keeping all this from me. Were they ever going to introduce Janet to me? Did my wife’s passing cause Janet to go further into hiding or compel her to keep hiding? How long had they been hiding her from me? Were they afraid of what I might say? What I might do?

I flip to the next page, the one with my two daughters and my wife. “The three women in my life now gone. One gone yesterday, one gone for long, and one gone forever.” The house never felt more empty. I can’t understand why all that I had was gone. All that was left was the photo album and the note. I forgive you Daddy, but I’m not coming back. I love you, Janet. The handwriting was so delicate, cursive… artful even. The same handwriting on any other letter would have been less bittersweet. Ironic, that the last thing she would write to me was her introduction. How much pain and anguish had she been under? How much control she must have had to write that so… Serenely? The lettering had a light touch to them-faint, but distinct. This was not the work of a son in anguish, but a daughter in her most angelic light.

How? How could I have missed this? Were there signs? So much I never knew, never would know. It wretched inside me. What was worse? Never seeing the woman, you loved again or never getting to meet the daughter you never knew existed? No, what was worse was that given the chance to meet her, you drove her away. Ransacking her room, throwing her aside. Casting her aside? Guilt and anguish wrought over me as it did when I saw the album and then the photos of Janet. Where had I gone wrong? What could I have done?

Her room was empty, but the garbage cans in the yard were full. Full of the what she had left behind. The telltale artifacts of a young man casting off youth and innocence. Or was it casting off the disguise? The cocoon shed, leaving no trace of the butterfly that emerged from within. Where are you? Where did you fly off to? Her room is so empty. Like her sister's. I hadn’t done a thing with her sister’s room from the day she left. I was hoping she would come back. I take the album walk towards the door and close it behind me.

Years later a letter in a maroon colored envelope arrives, the return address says, "Janet Carson and Harold Lopes." It's in that familiar cursive. Its contents has the weight of cardstock.