And my blood ran cold, because that top shelf, that exact hiding place, was where Santiago used to tuck away her little treasures to surprise her, a spot he had chosen precisely because it was too high for her to reach and too obvious for me to think of.

It was the small domestic intimacies like that one, more than the big dramatic tells, that finally convinced me beyond any argument.

A liar can study the important facts of a life, the wedding, the hotel, the broken bone.

But no impostor thinks to learn where a man used to hide his daughter’s toys, because it is too small, too private, too far below the level of anything anyone would ever test.

Those tiny unremarkable habits are the true fingerprints of a life, the things you only know if you actually lived it, and the man in my house had them all.