Sometime during the trial, my father’s relatives tried contacting me. They even showed up in town, but whenever they arrived at a place I happened to be, I’d quietly sneak away unseen. To have allowed them into my life would have only served as a reminder of something I wanted to forget. I believed it was possible then. One of them, my father’s brother, took the stand midway through the trial, and it was then I learned of my father’s discharge from the military, and everything else from his past. The relatives hung around for several weeks and called dozens of times. But when I never returned a single call, they eventually took the hint and quietly went away. I was happy they did. For all I know, they may have been good people, but I wasn’t ready for them. Not then, anyhow.

I, too, testified against my father, being the only actual witness to the crime. I was terrified, feeling jittery as I sat straight as a board in the same suit I’d worn to my mother’s funeral. I could see my father at the defendant’s table in my peripheral vision, but I refused to look at him. And then the district attorney, who had a habit of pacing as he asked questions, passed the table, and my gaze was accidentally averted and I met my father’s eyes for the first time since everything happened and for what would be the last time. He sat slumped, his face unshaven and hair disheveled, and he stared at me with such sorrow that you could tell he was a man who knew his life had come to a sudden end, and I have no doubt that he felt terrible regret for what he had done, which is, of course, what I had hoped for, his pain and agony. I took comfort in it. Then I quickly looked away and, in a shaky voice, answered the question that I’d been asked. I didn’t look at my father again. There, in the courtroom, was the last time I ever saw him.

2

Two weeks after the shooting, for the first time since it had happened and for what would be the last time, I entered my parents’ home. It had been cleaned, all the dishes removed from the various tables, ashtrays emptied, all the surfaces wiped and dusted. It was the same house, but everything familiar was gone, and in many ways the loss of a place is not unlike the loss of a person. The initial impact is less profound, but both vanish without notice or permission, leaving the self diminished. That’s how I felt that day. Diminished. And in need of testimony of the life I had once lived there.