My daughter “went to school” every morning — then her teacher called and told me she’d been skipping for a whole week, so I followed her the next morning.

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“I’m sorry I lied to you,” she told me once, a few months after the funeral, both of us sitting on her bedroom floor going through old photographs of her father from before everything got complicated between the two of us.

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“I know,” I said. “I understand why you did it, even if I still wish you’d trusted me enough to just ask directly.”