Julian had carried this dress for forty-five years.

It was all he had left of his daughter.

And he had left it, at the end, to me.

Chapter 8 — Four Decades a Recluse

“After the tragedy,” Arthur continued, “Julian’s marriage did not survive.

Few marriages do, after the loss of a child; the grief is simply too heavy to carry together.

His wife took young Caleb and moved away, and cut off all contact, and Julian never saw his son again.”

I thought of the man I had known, the gentle, solitary old tailor with no one in the world, and I understood, now, the depth of the solitude I had only glimpsed.