Chapter 1 — The Worn Box

Fifteen years after my wife walked out on me and our six daughters, I had come to believe that I had finally learned how to live with the shape of her absence.

I had spent those long years raising our girls, watching them grow from frightened children clinging to a father who did not know what he was doing into strong, whole young women who did.

And through all of those years, I had kept a box.

Into it went every unanswered invitation and every returned photograph from all the lonely months.

Every birthday card the girls made for their mother.

Every graduation notice, every recital program, every letter I sent that came back unopened with the address in my own handwriting and a stamp across it: return to sender.

I saved all of it, and I tucked it away in one worn cardboard box in the back of a closet, and I did not look at it, and I did not throw it away.

I want to be clear about why I kept it, because it would be easy to misunderstand.

I did not keep it because I hated Laura; I did not, though God knows I had cause.

And I did not keep it out of any desire for revenge, to hoard evidence for some future reckoning.

I kept it for one reason only.

I knew that someday my daughters might grow up and ask me a question I would never be able to answer with words alone.

They might ask whether I had truly tried to keep our family together, whether their father had made an effort to bring their mother back into their lives, or whether he had simply let her go.

And when that day came, I wanted to be able to look each of them in the eye and say yes.

I tried.

I tried with everything I had, for years on end.

The box was not a weapon.