At 11:48 p.m., four days after my father’s funeral, I was sitting at his kitchen table with a cassette tape in my hand that had tomorrow’s date on it. I had already listened to three tapes meant for my daughter, Molly. I thought I knew why he’d made them. Then I saw the note tucked under the plastic case.

Beth, play this one alone first.

That was when I stopped sorting.

My father, Frank Hollis, believed in labels. He labeled coffee filters, spare fuses, Christmas extension cords, and the key to the shed, even though the key hung on the same nail by the back door for as long as I could remember.

If something fit in a coffee can, he put masking tape on it and wrote exactly what was inside.

So when I found the shoebox in his closet, I almost smiled.

For bedtime, in case.

Molly was five then. She still slept with one sock on and kicked the other one under the bed. Daddy read to her every Friday night while I worked the late shift at the pharmacy. He did voices badly. The bear sounded like the farmer. The princess sounded like the farmer. Everybody sounded like a man from north Georgia with dentures.

The house still smelled faintly like his pipe tobacco, even though he’d quit smoking in 2003.

I opened the box on his bed and found 214 cassette tapes in neat rows. Each one had Molly’s name and a date written in blue ink.

Molly, age 5, night after first loose tooth.

Molly, age 6, when school feels mean.

Molly, age 8, Christmas Eve.

The dates kept going. Ten. Twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen.

Daddy had been dead four days.

I wish I could say I understood it as love right away.

I didn’t. I got mad first. Quietly mad, which is worse for me because I can be polite while I’m saying ugly things in my head.

Why did you have time to make all this, Daddy?

Why didn’t you tell me how sick you were?

He’d told me it was his breathing. Just his breathing. A bad winter. Old lungs. He said it while peeling an orange at my kitchen counter, making the peel come off in one long strip.

“You worry too much, Beth.”

That was his answer to almost everything.

I carried the box to the kitchen and dug his old tape player out of the junk drawer. It was behind rubber bands, a Phillips screwdriver with dried white paint on the handle, and two batteries that had leaked into a little crusty mess. I wiped the player off with a dish towel and found batteries that worked.

The first tape clicked.

There was static. Daddy coughed once. Then he cleared his throat.

“Hey, Molly-girl,” he said. “Your mama is probably tired, so you be good for her.”

I pressed stop so hard the button stuck.

Molly came in dragging her blanket. She was five, and her hair was standing up on one side from sleep.

“Is that Grandpa?”

“It’s an old tape,” I said.

That was a lie, but not a very good one.

She climbed into my lap even though her knees were digging into my ribs. She smelled like Johnson’s baby shampoo and the powdered laundry soap I bought at the dollar store. I pressed play again.

Daddy read The Poky Little Puppy. He messed up one sentence twice, laughed under his breath, and said, “Don’t tell your mama I’m no good at this.”

Molly giggled.

I didn’t. Not yet.

After she went back to bed, I sorted the tapes by date. Some were simple. First day of middle school. Bad dream. When you miss me. One said, Molly, age 15, if the blue dress fight happens.

I found that one near midnight. Daddy talked for six minutes about how I needed to stop treating every disagreement like a fire alarm. Molly had apparently loved a blue dress I hated.

“You’re going to say it makes you look grown,” he told her on the tape. “Your mama is going to say something mean. She’ll be sorry.”

I actually laughed then, which made me feel guilty.

The next few weeks were strange but softer than I expected. Molly and I listened to one tape every Sunday afternoon. Daddy talked about school, boys, bad dreams, and how to make toast without burning the top. Some tapes were silly. Some were only two minutes long.

On one, he said, “If you’re hearing this, your mama probably forgot to eat again.”

Molly looked at me. “You do that.”

“I eat.”

“Coffee isn’t food.”

I wanted to tell her to mind her business, but Daddy had already said the same thing for twenty years.

The tapes made the house feel less empty. That sounds silly, but it’s true. Molly would leave the player on the counter while she did homework. I’d hear Daddy coughing from the living room and turn around before remembering.

I started thinking maybe this was what he wanted. Not some sad secret. Just a way to keep bedtime going.

Then I found the tape dated for the next day.

Molly, age 5, the night after I leave.

I read it twice.

The words were written in blue ink, but the line was crooked, unlike the others. The cassette case had a greasy thumbprint near the hinge. I knew that thumbprint. Daddy used to wipe his hands on his jeans after eating fried chicken, then complain that everything in the world was slippery.

I turned the case over.

Beth, play this one alone first.

I carried it into the laundry room because Molly was asleep down the hall. I shut the door, though there wasn’t much point. The washing machine was full of towels, and one of Daddy’s old flannel shirts was still hanging on the back of the door because I hadn’t been able to throw it away.

I pressed play.

For several seconds, there was only tape hiss.

Then Daddy said my name.

“Beth, if this is tomorrow, I’m sorry.”

I sat on top of the dryer.

He told me he’d known about the lung cancer for almost nine months before he told me. Not a week. Not a few days. Nine months.

He’d found out after a scan in Des Moines. The doctor wanted him to start treatment right away.

“I said no,” Daddy told me. “I said I had time.”

That sounded like him. He always believed time was something you could stretch if you folded it right.

He said he didn’t want me spending the last part of his life driving him to appointments, watching him get thinner, and trying to act brave. He didn’t want Molly to remember hospitals instead of stories.

I hated him for that.

I hated him because I understood it.

The tape clicked off.

I rewound it and listened again. Then I called my brother, Wade, even though I knew he’d been drinking at the funeral and probably still had his phone on silent.

He answered after the sixth ring.

“What happened?”

“Did you know Daddy had cancer?”

There was a long pause.

“I knew he was sick.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Wade rubbed his face. I could hear it through the phone.

“He made me promise.”

“Promise what?”

“Not to tell you unless he asked me to.”

I got mad at Wade too. I said things I shouldn’t have said. I told him he was a coward. I told him Daddy had made liars out of both of us. Wade didn’t argue.

“He was scared, Beth.”

“So was I.”

“I know.”

That was all. I hung up because I couldn’t stand hearing him be right.

The next Sunday, Molly asked if we could listen to another tape. I almost said no. I was tired of hearing my father’s voice come out of that little gray machine. Tired of the cough. Tired of missing somebody who had chosen to leave me out of his own death.

But Molly had the shoebox beside her and was holding a tape marked with her name.

“Grandpa made these for me,” she said.

“He did.”

“Then why do you look mad?”

I picked up the tape player. “Because grown-ups are bad at things.”

She seemed satisfied with that.

The tape was for the night after a first heartbreak. Molly was sixteen on the label, though she was still only five when Daddy made it. He said she might be crying over somebody who didn’t deserve her. He said she should eat something anyway.

Then his voice changed.

“Your mama is going to tell you she’s fine,” he said. “She’ll say she can handle it. Don’t let her fool you.”

Molly looked at me.

I said, “He was talking about me.”

Daddy went on.

“Beth, I know you think I made these for Molly. I did. But I made them for you too.”

I reached for the stop button.

Molly put her hand over mine.

“Let it play.”

So I did.

Daddy said he’d started recording because he heard me crying in the pharmacy parking lot one night. I’d thought he was asleep when I came home. He said he knew I was trying to be strong for Molly, but he also knew I was tired.

“I can’t fix this for you,” he said. “I know that. I wish I could.”

His voice broke on the next part, and I had to turn the volume down because I couldn’t bear the sound of him struggling.

“But you don’t have to be fine every night. Just press play.”

That was the sentence I had been avoiding.

Not the cancer. Not even the nine months.

The fact that he had watched me carry everything and had known exactly where I was weak.

Molly started crying beside me. I pulled her against my shoulder. For a while, neither of us said anything. The tape kept turning.

Daddy talked about the kitchen, the laundry room, and the house he knew I’d keep because I was stubborn. He told Molly the sock thing would pass. He told me to stop saving ugly mugs because they were free.

Then he said there were 214 tapes because he counted the Sundays between Molly’s fifth birthday and her eighteenth.

“I figured that was enough,” he said. “But if it isn’t, make more.”

He had known his diagnosis before he admitted it. He’d known he might not see Molly become sixteen, or graduate, or leave home. So he made his voice for the days he couldn’t be there.

And he made it for me, because he knew I’d keep doing what I always did. Working. Cooking. Saying I was fine.

The last tape wasn’t for tomorrow after all. It was for every night after he left.

Molly and I stayed at the kitchen table until 2:17 in the morning. The shoebox sat open between us. His labels were still neat. His blue ink was still the same.

I put the tape back in its case and held it against my chest.

On the label, beneath Molly’s name and the date, Daddy had written one extra line.

For Beth too.

I pressed play, and his voice stayed in our house.