When the Herald notified me that I’d been chosen to be one of the paper’s high school interns, he’d been as excited as I was. Even at breakfast the next morning he kept talking about it, until he noticed the time.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “My plane!” And after a last gulp of coffee he grabbed his carry-on, gave us fast kisses, and headed out.

“Where’s he off to this time?” I asked as Mom and I followed him outside.

“Boise, and then Spokane.”

Dad, backing down the driveway, made the “okay” sign with his thumb and forefinger. All’s okay with the Chens. Mom, waving back, made the sign, too, completing the ritual. Yes, all’s okay.

I just waved, but then, suddenly, I ran barefoot to his car, motioning for the window to be opened. “Dad, what if I can’t do the job?”

“You’ll do fine,” he said. “I guarantee it.”

He backed a few feet more and then stopped again. And even though he had Seattle traffic to fight and the airport hassle to deal with, he spoke to me as though he had all the time in the world. “That answer wasn’t fair,” he said. “I can’t guarantee anything, but I can tell you what I believe. And that’s that you’re going to be the best intern the Herald has ever hired.”

I nodded, understanding that he wouldn’t have been Dad if he’d let even the best-meant half-truth go uncorrected. But my question needed fixing, too. “The thing is,” I said, “what if I don’t like working there? Don’t like the news? When journalism is all I’ve ever thought about doing?”

“Then you’ll have learned something about yourself while all the choices are still in front of you.”

It briefly looked as if a shadow crossed Dad’s face, though there wasn’t enough sunlight leaking through the overcast sky to make one. And anyway, in another instant the corners of his eyes crinkled and his voice held laughter. “And as for the news business being your only ambition—I seem to recall plans to be just like your kindergarten teacher, and an earlier ambition to raise elephants.”

“Giraffes,” I corrected.

“Giraffes, then. Maggie, the point is, you don’t have to decide, at sixteen, what you want to be for the rest of your life. Or who.”

“What do you mean, who?” I asked, because the word didn’t seem to exactly follow, and another thing that defined Dad was the logical way his mind worked. But by then he was looking at his watch, and I didn’t get an answer.

I never saw my father again. A few days after that, driving home from Sea-Tac Airport, he stopped at a convenience store, and as he was getting out of his car, another car hit him.