“I know!” The anguish on his face grows. “You have to understand, I kept telling myself that in ten minutes I was going to turn around. Then I wanted another ten minutes because I knew how much trouble I was going to be in once we returned to your mother’s. I was planning on going to Paula’s. Once you were asleep in the back, I took out my phone to call Paula to tell her where we were. But my phone was crazy with more messages. I listened to the last one first. Your mother was furious … and she had every right to be. But she told me she had called the police. She said she’d make sure that I would never get to see you again. I realized at that moment that if we went back I could lose you forever. I’d be lucky to even get supervised visits.

“I knew I was making a mistake, and it would eventually catch up to me, but I got back in the car and kept driving. And driving. With every mile, I was digging myself into a deeper hole that I couldn’t get out of. So I made the decision to keep digging. I kept driving. At one point, I took out all the money I had, traded in my car for another, and kept heading north. When you woke up in the middle of the night, you asked what we were doing. I told you it was an adventure. Eventually you stopped asking questions altogether. We stopped in Cleveland since I figured we could hide in a bigger city.”

“We lived in Cleveland?” I have absolutely no memory of Cleveland. Chicago was the first home I can recall.

“Yes. For only a couple months. The longer I kept you away, the more lies I had to tell, the more trouble I knew I was in. So I kept us moving. I was anxious those first few years. We never stayed more than six months in a town, especially when someone would start asking questions. My plan was to eventually get us to Canada. That’s where we were headed when we stopped in Valley Falls. I found a temporary job and was waiting on a contact to get us passports that hopefully would’ve worked. We were only supposed to be here for a few months, but you really took to it … and so did I. So we stayed.”

He leans back in his chair. “After a while, I started to believe my lies. I’d been lying for so long that it had to be true. I couldn’t face what I had done. What I did to you. What I did to your mother. But all it took was one look at you, to see how happy you were here, to convince myself that it was for the best.”