Coming Home

Someone once told me the best thing about the past is that you can leave it behind. And I had believed them. I had hoped it was true. For perhaps more than most people, I had a good reason to want to leave my past in the past. Some things are better forgotten, or if not forgotten, at least hidden somewhere in the back of my mind where I don’t have to be reminded of it on a daily basis. That’s how I’d lived the past ten years of my life. Successfully I thought. But, while some people might say the past can be left behind, others will tell you that the past can come back to haunt you too. Mine came back to haunt me on one of those sharp New York November mornings when the bitterly cold hand of winter reaches through the avenues of Manhattan and slaps you in the face. It was just a letter. A letter dropped into my mailbox along with a few bills and circulars. A letter telling me something I couldn’t quite believe, even though it was written in black and white and could not be ignored