Not a single time in 30 years had he picked up a phone or knocked on a door or even let himself wonder properly, because wondering properly would have meant having to live with the answer.
He pressed both hands flat on the desk and looked at the letter.
I raised our child to be better than the fear that made you run away.
He thought about a young woman who arrived 5 minutes early on her first day of work, who moved through his house with quiet, careful dignity, who said, I can work with particular, and looked him in the eye when she said it. He thought about the face an old friend, a tired, jet-lagged old friend, had looked at across a hallway and said without meaning to, She looks like Victoria.
He thought about the feeling he had felt the first time their eyes met, that strange familiar squeeze in his chest, that sensation of recognizing something without knowing what it was.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the lamp was still burning and the letter was still there.
Outside the window, the sky had shifted almost imperceptibly from the black of full night to the very deep blue that comes just before morning begins.
He had been sitting there for hours.