I knew where she was going, and I did not want to follow her there.

“No, Samantha,” I said.

“You know what I’m asking for, Dad,” she said, quietly.

And I did.

Of course I did.

“The box stays where it is,” I said.

It came out harder than I intended, because it frightened me.

That box was fifteen years of the worst of it, fifteen years of returned love and unanswered pleas, and I had never once taken it out, because I did not want its contents in my daughters’ hands or in their memories.