The first line was my father\u2019s handwriting. Not similar to it. It was his, the same cramped loop on the letter D, the same habit of never crossing the first letter of a sentence. Douglas was not a stranger I had been buying coffee for. He was Douglas Ward Kessler, my father, who walked out of our apartment in Pittsburgh when I was six and whom my mother had told me was dead by the time I was nine. He had recognized me the first week I passed him. He never said a word for three years.<\/p>\n
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The pages explained why. He had been an alcoholic in 1997 and a worse one by 2001, and he wrote that the kindest thing he ever did was leave before I could remember him properly. He had followed my life from a distance the way people follow weather in a city they no longer live in. He knew where I worked. He knew I took my coffee the same way he did. He wrote that every morning I handed him a cup, he was being forgiven by someone who had no idea she was doing it, and that he could not ruin it by telling me the truth.<\/p>\n
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