The mall fell silent.<\/p>\n
The man stared at the gold dog tag.<\/p>\n
Then at the woman in the burgundy dress.<\/p>\n
His voice shook.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere did she get this?\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman’s face turned pale.<\/p>\n
She couldn’t answer.<\/p>\n
The girl looked between them.<\/p>\n
Confused.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom said my dad abandoned us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man slowly pulled an old photograph from his wallet.<\/p>\n
It showed him holding the same dog tag years earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never left.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was told my daughter had died.\u201d<\/p>\n
The girl gasped.<\/p>\n
Tears streamed down her face.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’ve been looking for me?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman lowered her head.<\/p>\n
The truth she had hidden for years had finally caught up with her.<\/p>\n
The girl dropped her crutches and wrapped her arms around him.<\/p>\n
For the first time in her life\u2014<\/p>\n
she wasn’t wondering where her father was.<\/p>\n
She was finally in his arms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The mall fell silent. The man stared at the gold dog tag. Then at the woman in the burgundy dress. His voice shook. \u201cWhere did she get this?\u201d The woman’s face turned pale. She couldn’t answer. The girl looked between them. Confused. \u201cMy mom said my dad abandoned us.\u201d The man slowly pulled an old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9715,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714\/revisions\/9715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}