Show up.

Keep showing up.

Answer every call.

Come every time.

Until one day, years from now, the accumulated proof of a man who always comes finally outweighs the three years of a world that didn’t, and my nephew gets to believe the true thing at last, which is that he was always, every single day, worth coming for.

Chapter 9 — The Closet

A few weeks after they came, Paulette called and asked, a little carefully, whether I wanted some things that had been recovered from the house and logged and released — things, she said, that appeared to belong to me.