When Priscilla called my father, on the rare occasions he came up, “some absent old salesman,” I let her.

I had built a whole quiet life on the far side of a name, and it had felt, for a while, like freedom.

I should explain the estrangement, because it matters, and because it was not the simple thing people assume.

My father and I had not fallen out over anything cruel.

We had fallen out over the money — over the way it warped every room he walked into, the way people rearranged their faces when they learned who he was, the way I could never be sure, growing up, whether a friend was a friend or an investment.

I had wanted, more than I had ever wanted anything, to be loved by someone who did not know.