It wasn't until I discovered Dad's cardboard spaceship—hidden and dusty, tucked away in our attic—that I realized he had secrets. Big secrets.

            Until then, I hadn't paid him much mind. He was just there, like the furniture, or the cat he enjoyed sitting with late into the night.

            I'd often go a week without hearing Dad speak. He would silently lurk around the house, pressed and perfect in his Sunday best, quiet and calm in his resolute commitment as the nonexistent family member. I personally had no opinion about him one way or the other. He'd become sullen and boring, a ghost who lived in the cracks of our family, the cracks that existed in the corners of the house where no one cared to look.

            I'd ventured up into the attic, the scariest place in the house, one afternoon while home sick from an acute case of sixth-grade homework procrastination.

            "I don't know what's wrong with you," Mom said, looking at me putting on my well-practiced sick face. "Guess you'd better stay home," she said, to no one in particular, walking past Dad as she left the room. He just stood there, invisible, looking out my bedroom window, at what I wasn't quite sure.

            In the attic, the four open lids of the cardboard box that made up the central command module brushed my hair as I took a seat in the pilot's chair made entirely of grandma's old couch cushions. I briefly remembered Mother lambasting Dad, years earlier, for wanting to keep the old couch. So this is where it ended up, I thought.

            The control surface and hi-tech instruments of the ship were drawn in standard Crayola crayon. Red for the altitude and omni-directional finder, blue for all the secondary systems. The engine and re-entry dials were green, their accuracy and purpose beautiful and complete. On the co-pilot's seat sat the flight control manual, a three ringed binder filled with handwritten notes on mission protocol, rocket stages, and food re-hydration.

            The window of the ship was Saran Wrap, held in place by an old picture frame duct-taped to the cardboard fuselage. On the clear plastic lookout, digital readouts had been painstakingly rendered with a standard felt-tipped Sharpie.

            Off the nose of the machine sat white puffy matting that disappeared into the darkness of the place, solving once and for all the mysterious storage location of the snowy base for the family Christmas tree. The sparkles imbedded in its soft cloud-like surface twinkled like stars in the dim attic light, beckoning the craft in a way that seemed natural, almost plausible.

            I turned and inspected the aft section of the ship. A third seat, the navigation and primary systems chair, sat ready for flight. It was fully operational, complete with its own computer monitor. A hole had been cut in the wall of the craft to allow the screen to sit flush with the cardboard paneling. I poked my head out the top of the command module and looked behind me. My old computer rested neatly behind the scenes, perched on a TV tray to achieve the proper screen height.

            I spent many hours attempting to fly the ship that day, managing to make it out of the attic minutes before Dad appeared downstairs out of nowhere. I sat at the kitchen table watching him silently prepare dinner, the responsibility of which had been hoisted upon him long before I was born. Mother wasn't home yet, and it took many minutes of silence before I summoned the courage to speak to him.

            "I found the ship," I said. Dad stopped mid carrot slice, and then quietly carried on chopping the veggies. "Does it run?" I asked.

            He stopped again and sighed a long, ghostly sigh, staring out the kitchen window before speaking. "Yes, it runs," he said.

            "I knew it! I just knew it." I looked around the room, proud of myself.

            "Don't tell your mother," he said.

            "Can I go for a ride sometime?" I asked, a little too excitedly. He thought long and hard, and I was about to ask again, thinking he hadn't heard me.

            "Meet me at the ship at nine-thirty tonight, after your mother is asleep," he said, and disappeared. I picked up the knife and finished the chopping.

            At dinner, Mother talked endlessly about her day, making several comments about the disappointing choice of seasonal vegetables. Dad was seated in his usual spot at the table. He looked at me while she was talking and gave a little smile. I hadn't seen him smile for a long time; it was obvious, I was in on the secret. While Mom rambled on, I sat silently eating my dinner, pushing the carrots around my plate, enjoying my newly appointed promotion to co-pilot status.

            At nine-thirty I quietly climbed out of bed and walked into the hallway, checking that mother was asleep as I passed her room. I gently pulled down the collapsible stairs that led to the attic, and made my way to the top.

            Dad was already there, and had the Christmas lights and other functional equipment warmed up and humming. I eased myself into the co-pilot's seat.

            "Here, put these on." He handed me a pair of headphones connected to an old portable tape player located in the cardboard console between us. The tape machine played into my headphones, Aquarius, this is Mission Control, do you read me?

            Dad pressed the pause button on the tape player. "Mission Control, this is Aquarius, we read you loud and clear," he said, and then continued working though the binder that contained the pre-flight routine.

            "Tell them that we've found a problem in the fuel-tank actuator, and that we're looking at a work around," he said.

            "Mission Control, this is the co-pilot," I stated nervously. "Um, we've found a slight problem in the fuel-tank actuator and are working on a solution at this time."

            Dad pressed play on the tape recorder. Roger that Aquarius.

            "Have you ever dreamed of space?" he asked me.

            "Oh yeah, all the time," I said. "Ricky Connors down the street says that the sun is going to eat the Earth one day." I wasn't sure why I'd picked that moment to bring that up. He just looked at me and smiled in that way he used to.

            "Well, buckle up, things are about to get bumpy."

            One of his old ties had been turned into a seat belt. I grabbed it from behind me, and tied it around my waist.

            "Good," he said, reaching over to check its integrity.

            Dad turned around to enter a few coordinates into the computer behind us. "We're missing a third officer. Think you can pull up the slack?"

            I nodded, even though I wasn't sure.

            "Ok, hold on son!"

            With that, the walls of the spaceship started to shake. Dad reached for a few stenciled switches drawn onto the cardboard flaps on the roof, and looked at me one last time. "Here we go," he said.

            He pressed play on the tape recorder and it sprung to life. Aquarius, T-minus ten seconds and counting—ten, nine, eight...

            At five seconds I felt a definite lift, a lurch forward that announced itself rather unexpectedly. At two seconds the floor of the attic started to fall away, and at zero seconds we were gone, to where I'm still not sure.

            I know we traveled for some time that night. Cruised a few cosmic entities, took in a sunrise over an undiscovered planet. At one point Dad let me take the controls, tousled my hair, and said that it was customary for the pilot to let the co-pilot fly for a while. I did much better than I thought I would.

            Before long I was getting tired. Sleep crept in, slowly at first, like painting a room, and I didn't welcome it.

            "It's ok, you can sleep," he said.

            "But I don't want to."

            "You should. I think it's about time for you to get back. We don't want your mother to wake up and find you missing."

            I looked through him. "Are you coming back with me?" I asked.

            "I'm going to continue on," he said.

            "What about Mom?' I asked.

            "She moved on long ago; it's you I've been worried about."

            "But we miss you," I said, tears forming in my eyes.

            "I know you do," he said. "I miss you too."

            "Will I see you again?"

            He looked at me and I could feel my eyelids pulling themselves down. He grabbed a blanket from the back of the ship, one we had used for picnics on warm summer days. "No," he said, "you won't see me again—you don't need to."

            I nodded my head while sleep over took me, awaking the next morning, rested for the first time in years.