We sat in his kitchen for six hours. He showed me a scrapbook. It had every obituary my mother had ever gotten published — for me, for my grandparents, for events I had not known he knew about. He had been following me, quietly, from a distance, for twenty-seven years. He had not reached out because he believed, wrongly, that I had been told the truth. He believed I hated him. He believed my mother had told me what he was at his worst, and that I had decided to have nothing to do with him, and that the only honorable thing to do was to respect that. He cried while he told me this. He said, "If I had known — kid, if I had known you thought I was dead, I would have broken down the door of that house. You have to believe me." I believed him. I still believe him. I drove back to my hotel that night and I lay on the bed and I did not call my mother. I did not know if I was ever going to call her again.