She never knew his face, only the silence he left behind.
Her mother, Zara, used to say he was a ghost not because he was dead, but because he vanished like one. No noise, no explanation. One day he was there, telling her she looked beautiful in his shirt. The next, there was nothing. Not even the sound of retreating footsteps.
Khloe grew up in the warm but fragile cocoon of her mother's love. It wasn't always easy. Love, in their home, was wrapped in sacrifice, stitched into quiet gestures. Zara worked two jobs, sometimes three. She smiled through exhaustion, her eyes dark with tiredness but always soft when they landed on Khloe.
Their tiny two-room apartment had a leaky kitchen tap and walls thin enough to hear the neighbors argue about dinner. The furniture was all secondhand wobbly legs and faded cushions but Zara kept it clean, as if dignity could be preserved with lemon-scented polish. On Sunday mornings, Khloe would wake to the smell of frying plantains and the mellow crackle of old highlife songs from a chipped radio on the window sill.
Zara made everything stretch: money, patience, dreams. She kept the world at bay with thread and prayers.
Khloe learned early not to ask about him. The one time she did, she was six, her legs swinging beneath the kitchen table as she traced circles into the Formica. Zara had been washing dishes, her back turned.
"Mummy… where is Daddy?"
Zara dropped a plate. It didn't break, but the sound was sharp. When she turned, her smile was stretched too thin, like a rubber band about to snap. "He's not here," she said, voice flat.
"Will he come back?"
Zara dried her hands and knelt, meeting Khloe's gaze. "He was a ghost even before you were born, Khloe. We don't wait for ghosts."
That was the end of it. After that, Khloe never asked again. But silence lingered like dust settling in corners, clinging to questions she never dared to speak.
She often wondered if she was born into that silence. There were no stories, no old photographs, no worn-out shirts that smelled like aftershave or sweat. Just a hollow space where a man's presence should have been. In her earliest memories, it was always just the two of them her and Zara.
There were sounds that filled that gap: the fizz of boiling rice, the sigh of worn-out sneakers coming through the front door, the hum of the ceiling fan at night. But the sound of a man's voice, a father's laugh, footsteps in the hallway those were missing. Always missing.
Zara had Khloe when she was just twenty barely more than a girl herself. Her beauty was undeniable, though softened by life. She had strong, calloused hands from years of stitching fabric and scrubbing floors, and eyes that carried the quiet wisdom of someone who had survived too much too young.
She taught Khloe how to be independent, how to iron a blouse properly, how to budget for a week with barely anything. But more than that, she taught her the importance of stillness. Of listening. Of watching the world before entering it.
There were no sleepovers, no boyfriends, no distractions. Just books, chores, and careful dreams. Zara guarded Khloe's childhood like it was the last thing she could protect. Maybe, in some ways, it was.
Still, Khloe grew—smart, quiet, and observant. The kind of girl who listened more than she spoke. The kind who never liked surprises. The kind who didn't trust easily.
Once, when she was twelve, they were sitting on the floor during a power outage, peeling oranges by candlelight. Khloe asked the question that had been burning inside her for years.
"Was he kind?"
Zara froze. Her knife paused mid-slice.
"He was… charming," she said eventually. Her voice was calm, but her eyes didn't meet Khloe's. "But charming men can be dangerous."
That was all she said. And that was all Khloe needed to hear.
She never brought it up again.
In the quiet that followed, Khloe decided she didn't need a father to know who she was. What she needed was a path. And her mother tired but determined, bent but unbroken was all the map she had.