The box had been mine alone for so long.

I had packed it, sealed it, hidden it, guarded it, and never once shown its contents to another living soul, not even to the daughters it concerned.

It had been, in a sense, the most private thing about me, the repository of a grief I had never given words to.

And now my daughter was about to open it in front of a hundred and fifty people, and everything I had kept in the dark for fifteen years was about to come into the light all at once.

The fear was of the exposure, of having my long private hurt made suddenly visible.