I locked my wife in the pantry under the stairs

was going to protect our son.”

“You were going to humiliate me.”

Those two sentences stand facing each other, thirty years late.

Dad looks at me. “She drugged my coffee. When I woke, I was here. She told everyone I crashed near Black Mountain. She had a funeral with a closed casket. Her brother helped her. He worked at the county records office then.”

I continue reading …