I’ve looked at that phone number a lot since December 9th. I haven’t called it. I’m not sure I’m going to. I’m not sure what I would even say. Thank your father for thinking about me for thirty-one years when I never thought about him once?

Tell him the cards meant something even when they were confusing? Ask him what he remembered about me that I apparently never earned?

The shoebox is on my kitchen table right now. All the cards. I keep meaning to put it back in the closet and I haven’t.

My daughter called last week and asked what I wanted for Christmas and I said I didn’t know. She said I sounded weird. I said I was fine. I didn’t tell her about the card because I didn’t know how to explain the shoebox, or Marcus, or what thirty-one years of a mystery ending actually feels like.

It doesn’t feel like closure. I’ll say that much. It doesn’t feel like anything I have a word for.