You were the reason I kept going. Not a metaphor. The actual reason. On the hard nights I would say your name out loud in the cab of that truck, the one word you gave me back that night, and I would get up the next morning.
By 2010 I had built something bigger than what I’d lost. I won’t bore you with it. The lawyers will explain.
But I never, for one single day, stopped looking for the girl with the twins and the gray sling who asked my name in the rain.
I hired people to help me find you. Do you know how hard it is to find one teenage girl who gave no last name, in the rain, twenty years ago? I spent more trying to find you than I ever gave away to anyone else. It was the best money I ever spent, too.
I pressed the handkerchief to my mouth.
