My wife left me with our six daughters for a wealthy man. Fifteen years later she texted to say she’d be at our oldest daughter’s wedding — and my daughter told me to let her come, because she had already prepared a special welcome for her.

I lied to my children about their mother for a decade and a half to keep them from a purple stamp.

I have been asked since whether I regret it. I do, and I would do it again, and both of those are true at the same time and I have stopped trying to sort them out.

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PART 3 — WHAT JUNIA DID

Two years ago I moved out of the rented place on Fennimore into a small house I finally managed to buy, and Junia came over on a Saturday to help me clear the attic.

She found the box at about eleven in the morning.

I was downstairs. She was up there for forty minutes and did not make a sound, and when she came down she had the whole thing in her arms and her face was completely dry and completely white.