It was a brazen thing, she thought, to disappear, much bolder than she was capable of. Her mother had always couched her father’s leaving as cowardice, but actually leaving—Julia didn’t begin to look at it this way until her mother left her too—had to take something like gumption; going away and staying away forever must have required a not insignificant amount of tenacity. How many times had she wanted to leave in the last few years? But she lacked the follow-through, the strength. She was not tenacious in the least.
