It had been harder on Jamee than on Darcy when Dad left. Darcy was closer to Mom, but Jamee was Daddy’s little girl. They went to basketball games together and just seemed to have a companionship that Darcy never had with her father. On a family hike in the Laguna Mountains, Jamee and her father chose a special tree, a giant cedar. One day they stood by their tree, and Dad dubbed Jamee “Princess of the World,” surprising her with a tiny crown for her head. Jamee’s squeals of joy had echoed through the forest that day.

“Why did Daddy leave us?” Jamee had demanded tearfully when it was clear he would not be coming home.

“Leaving was more fun than staying,” Mom had answered bitterly.

Darcy always suspected her mother had seen some warning signs, but to Darcy and Jamee it had been a complete shock. Jamee made up stories for a long time after, trying to explain why her father had left. She had shared them with Darcy. Daddy had a terrible disease, and he did not want to burden his family with it. He had some secret government job that was so dangerous he could not risk being around his family anymore. But, eventually, even Jamee had laughed at her own fantasies. She had grudgingly accepted her mother’s simple explanation—Daddy had found something else that meant more to him than his family. Darcy remembered it was about then that Jamee slowly began to change, to have angry, sad moods, to be cynical.

Darcy went to bed, but she did not sleep for a while. She relived her last meeting with her father, when he took her and Jamee for ice cream on a hot August afternoon. Darcy later figured it was the best way he could manage to say goodbye. Darcy and Jamee were just little girls, so they did not question his heavy step, the way his jaw was set. They were too busy deciding between chocolate chip and strawberry ice cream to pay attention to his odd mumbling. “Nothin’ever happens around here, except I’m getting older. ” He talked about being a teenager in New York and what a happening place it was, about the jazz clubs, and dancing until dawn. “Man grows old too fast around here,” he said. “Gets dead before they put him in the box. ”

The day Dad left, he kissed Darcy, then kissed and hugged Jamee so hard that she giggled and protested. After putting the girls on a trolley home, he had turned and walked away faster than Darcy had ever seen him walk before. Darcy did not think about it then, but now she figured he walked so quickly because he knew what he was doing was wrong. The faster he walked away, the sooner he could escape the truth—that he was abandoning his wife and daughters.