14.

We found the slim history of life before father
pressed into a single photo album

buried deep in the back of your closet
The Gordian knot was cut

Long-held enigmas were unraveled like why
you protested so heatedly when our Mormon relatives

used genealogical research to invade your privacy
like when Judy, at fifteen, found you crying

over a letter from Florida
holding a news clipping in your hand

like the black and white photo of you with an un-named man
wearing a fine suit and immaculate shoes

kneeling beside a stroller with a baby we couldn't identify
Was this proof of another life in hushed dormancy for years

closely guarded and undisclosed until
congestive heart failure took you from us?

Going through your things in the apartment in St. George
we found the clipping about my drowned half-brother

making some sense of my own fear of water
underscored by my nearly drowning at about the same time

falling into the deep end of the pool at a swimming party
for the baseball team because I wouldn't admit I didn't know how to      swim

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