I closed the journal and pressed it to my chest, and I let the tears come, warm against the cold rain, because I understood now that I had never been alone at all.

“I’m not angry, Dad,” I whispered to the granite.

“I understand now.

You didn’t leave me.

You were standing in the back of the room, the whole time.

I stayed at the graves a long while after that, until the drizzle had soaked through my coat and the light began to fail, because I did not want to leave.

It had taken me twenty-two years to be in the presence of both my parents at once, and I was reluctant to give it up, even knowing I could come back, even knowing that the granite was not them.

Before I rose, I said the other things too, the things you say at a grave that sound foolish and are not: that I forgave him, though there was nothing left to forgive; that I understood, finally, all of it; that the six weeks had been real for me too, as real as they had been for him, that I had not been playing a part, that somewhere beneath my own not-knowing I had loved him as a daughter loves a father from the very first afternoon.