I had always tried to make amends.

If Father had given us the truth and asked our forgiveness, perhaps our family would have been different.

Instead, he had taught himself to live with a lie because admitting it meant facing what he’d done.

That night, I wrote him a letter.

Not to mail, of course.

I wrote down every question I had carried since childhood, then told him about Evelyn’s life, about Poppy and the blue music box.

I told him we had found each other despite him, not because of him.