until Lily turned eighteen.”
I stared at him.
His voice shook.
My father’s voice almost never shook.
Then he said,
“Carl didn’t leave because he stopped loving you.”
I sat down.
At the same kitchen table where Carl had told me he was leaving thirteen years earlier.
“What are you saying?”
Dad pushed the box toward me.
“Open it.”
My hands trembled as I peeled away the tape.
For thirteen years, I had carried one version of Carl in my mind.
He had broken under grief.
He had abandoned us.
