Seeing it in the light, on the table where I had fed six daughters ten thousand meals, I understood for the first time that there was nothing shameful in it at all.

It was a record of a man who had tried, over and over, for years, to give his children back the mother they had lost, and had been refused every time.

The shame in that box was not mine.

It had never been mine.

It belonged entirely to the woman who had sent everything back, and it was long past time I stopped carrying it as though it were my own.

Chapter 12 — The Wedding Morning