Chapter 4 - "Don't Let Him Take Anything Else"
That night, after Poppy had gone to bed, she padded back out in her pajamas and found me still at the kitchen table with the document spread out in front of me.
"Are you still looking for the old man?"
"I found him. Now I'm looking for answers."
"Is this about Dad?"
"I don't know yet."
She leaned against the doorframe, the way she did when she'd decided to say something too old for her. I didn't have an answer for the look on her face.
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"Mom." She hesitated at the hallway corner. "Whatever it is — don't let him take anything else."
I sat with that long after she'd gone back to bed. My daughter had learned, at eight years old, to expect her father to take things. That was the moment the anger in me stopped being about a house and became about something I intended to fix.
