I told myself the trips and the meetings and the eighteen-hour days were sacrifices I was making on their behalf, gifts of security and opportunity I was laying at their feet.

And that story was comfortable, and it was a lie, because the truth was that my absence was not a gift to my children.

It was a wound I was inflicting on them, and worse, it was an open door, an unguarded house, an invitation to anyone who wished to do them harm in the vast spaces where their father should have been and was not.

Chloe walked through that door.