The recorder still worked. That surprised me more than anything — thirty years in a steel trunk under Ma's bed, past three monsoons and one flood, and the play button gave the same soft click it always had.
Papa had a habit of recording over things. Cricket commentary erased a wedding song; a wedding song erased my first words. He never apologised for it. Tapes are for keeping what you need today, he'd say, not what you needed yesterday. I hated that about him. I understand it now, which is worse.
The tape inside was labelled in his slanting hand: DEV — DO NOT ERASE. Underlined twice.
I sat on the floor of a house being sold on Sunday and pressed play. His voice came out younger than I remembered, and closer. Beta, if you're hearing this, you found the trunk. Good boy. Your mother is crying in the kitchen and pretending it's the onions. I don't have advice. You never took it. I only wanted to keep one thing I wouldn't record over. This is it. This is me, keeping you.
The tape ran on into silence. I let it. Outside, the light did the thing it used to do at six o'clock, sliding gold across the wall where our height marks still climbed in fading pencil.
I did not erase it. It turns out I am my father's son after all — just slower to learn which things you keep.