I picked up the ledger and started reading where I’d left off, shocked moments later to see my name. I read what he wrote in stunned silence and, not for the first time since coming here, wondered what kind of man my dad had really been. He’d done this for me. A man who couldn’t be with his son, who’d missed the best years of my life growing up, had wanted to share something with his blood.

Somehow he’d been keeping track of me, enough to know some of what I did but not all, ...