He has become, in a way that still surprises me, a kind of father figure, the steady older presence I did not have through my hardest years, and I have come to understand what those fifteen years of silence cost him too.

He did not choose the estrangement any more than my mother truly did; he lost his sister to the same protective plan that hid us, and then he lost her for good when she died, without ever being allowed to reconcile, and he carried the knowledge of us, his nieces, out there somewhere struggling, without being able to reach us until the trust matured and the danger passed.

He honored her plan even though it cost him his family, because he understood what it was for.

And the day the shares matured was the day he was finally released from that long obedience, finally free to come and find us and open the door.