The Man I Loved Disappeared the Exact Night I Told Him We Were Having a Baby — Two Weeks Later He Knelt in My Grandfather’s Gravel Driveway and Told Me He Hadn’t Run From Fatherhood; He’d Run to Burn Down His Entire Inheritance So His Family Could Never Come for Our Child

And it was not a debt a document could pay.

Chapter 3 — Her Father’s Eyes

From the very first moment they laid her against me, though, there was one thing impossible to miss.

She looked, painfully and undeniably, like Ezra.

She had his thick, dark curls, already, in a newborn.

She had the same small, distinct cleft in her chin.

And she had his eyes — which were the most startling thing about her, as they had been the most startling thing about him.

One of Brucie’s eyes was a bright, piercing ocean blue.