I came into the house,
exhausted and lost, Peck sitting in the living room.  He was off duty, and had found my note, one of many over the years.  He had read the cruel words I wrote, my desire to leave him and my life along the marsh spewed all over the paper, and he still stayed up waiting for me to return.  “How did you know I’d come back?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” he said.  “I was just hoping you would.” [p.292]

The night my daddy slipped out of the storm, the winter sky broke open momentarily to produce a shower of moonlight catching our attention and drawing our gaze upward . . . Through that brief patch of clear night, we strained to see astronauts streak across the sky, but our imaginations could not stay aloft for very long.  The brilliant flames of the fire in front of us kept pulling them back down to earth.  When the sky disappeared behind the storm, snow resumed and a figure appeared out beyond the fire trudging his way along the street curb.  It was Daddy coming home. [pgs. 2-3]