I tried to keep this family from falling apart, and instead I helped them tear it down.

Find the truth.

Take care of her.”

I sat on the floor of that cabin with my father’s notebook pressed against my chest, and I wept the way I had not wept since I was a boy.

And while I wept, the memories came, no longer softened by the story I had told for three years — arriving now in their true and unbearable colors.

Maya on my living room sofa, crying with such perfect, practiced grief.