PART 3   I stared at the hospital bracelet in the lunchbox until the letters of my own name blurred.

a wound he had stopped asking anyone to heal.

I pushed the lunchbox away.

“No. You don’t get to walk in here the day after her funeral and rewrite my whole life.”

Walter flinched at the word “funeral,” but he did not defend himself.

“I know.”

“You were behind our house,” I said, my voice rising. “For thirty years. Do you understand how strange that is? continue reading …