He couldn’t even look at me.

My mother took me away, and he never came for us.

He never even tried.

He chose this shop, and his grief, over his living son.”

And there it was, at last, the wound beneath the armor, the boy beneath the man, the abandoned child who had grown into a person determined to erase the father who, he believed, had erased him.

“He didn’t abandon you because he didn’t love you, Caleb,” I said gently.