Not because I wanted to punish Rhett; punishing him held no interest for me anymore.

But because I have learned that the most dangerous thing to a child is not a father who is absent.

It is a father who arrives, stays a while, and leaves again when the feeling that brought him fades — who reaches into a settled life, stirs it up, teaches a child to hope, and then discovers that fatherhood is harder than a graveside epiphany and quietly withdraws.

I had built my children a life with a floor under it.