I unfolded Linda’s letter along the creases she had made years before.

The last page had been folded inward.

She wrote that she had not told me where Robert was because she feared the people who once tried to decide their lives for them would do the same to me.

She thought silence would give me room to grow.

She was wrong to leave me without the truth, but she never wanted me to believe my father had chosen to abandon me.

I laid the page beside Robert’s watch.