I do not judge those women.

I want to be clear about that, because it would be easy to read my leaving as a verdict on the ones who stay, and it is not.

I understand exactly why they stay, because I felt every one of those gravities pulling on me in that doorway.

The years are real; eight of them, half my adult life, poured into a shared history you cannot simply set down.

The child is real; a girl who loved her father and did not know what he had done.