After 3 Years in Prison, I Came Home to Find My Father “Dead” and His House Taken by My Stepmother—Then a Groundskeeper Gave Me an Old Key and Whispered, “Your Father Was Never Buried Here.”

Three of the four took.

They are in a bed outside my father’s window, and they are not doing especially well, and I have been told by two people at the garden center that I should start over with new stock.

Last June, on a good day, Renata wheeled him out to the patio and he sat looking at them for a long time.

And my father, who does not reliably know the year, said:

“Those are Marilyn’s.”

“Yeah, Dad.

They are.”

“They look terrible.”

“I know.”

“Well,” he said.

“They came back, though.”

And then he asked me who I worked for now.