H is an Information Technology Engineer and provides consulting for fortune 500 companies. H lives with his lovely wife, 2 large German Shepherds, and a multitude of fish; but not for eating. Visit MemoirofaMan.com I lived most of my life with them and didn't realize who they were. He wasn't a quiet type of guy. Quite the opposite; he never hesitated to tell you what he thought. It was either his way or the highway. I never remember him really talking about his life at all. One day he was there and I was talking to him and suddenly there was this silence... [pause] I thought, "I'm never going to see him again, am I?" She was a different kind of girl. Somehow, I just never thought about her as a real person. When I dropped her off at the little apartment, she shuffled around the room then turned and looked at me and said, "Well, I guess this is where I'm gonna die." Then she sat on the end of the bed and wept. Somewhere deep inside I really did care but I didn't know what to say. There was one Christmas and we sit around the living room. It's one of those moments that burn the memory like an ember on a cold snowy night. Everybody watches me open this little package and I know its a book. Self-conscious, I feel like I'm on a stage and have to give the right performance. I'm like, "Ohhhh, it's a book. Wow." But, you know, I'm not really feeling it. I look over and my daughter's face has this grin plastered on it like she just gave me the Taj Mahal or something really fantastic. So I open it up and the table of contents has these little bubble pictures and some look like me and her mom. What is this? I close it and look at the cover again. Huh? An author with the same name as my daughter? That's weird. Where did she find a book like this? My wife grabs it from me and kind of pages through it. I'm looking over her shoulder and there are these pictures of us. "Oh look, it's a book about us!" Well nobody ever accused me of being the sharpest tool in the shed. Our daughter still wears a grin to beat the band as I gaze at her in shock. "Andrea, did you write this?" That was a challenge to me. As a child, I heard all these stories but never took time to do anything with it. When I started putting it all together, it just seemed there was this incredible drama of life, betrayal, and love. Somehow I missed it. I mean I'm... really astonished cause I never saw it that way. In the beginning, I wrote it for my daughter. In the end, maybe it's for you.