I can’t recall my father’s face. He left before I could form a memory, disappearing when I was just a baby. All I’ve ever had of him is his name printed on my birth certificate.

That’s the extent of my connection to the man who vanished without a trace, leaving behind only questions.

“Your daddy went away,” my mom used to say. “Sometimes people just go away, Stacey.” I didn’t understand what she meant back then. I do now.

My mother, Melissa, wasn’t absent, but I often wished she had been. She was present in the worst ways: her anger, her exhaustion, her resentment.