I was supposed to go back to L.A. because I was about to start school. “Please, ask Mommy if she’ll let me stay,” I begged my dad. “I’ll call her and ask her,” he said, and told me to go wait in my room. I remember pacing outside his doors, in that hallway with the foot-long shag rug. Eventually he came out and hugged me. I heard this kind of wheezing sound. He was crying. “You can’t stay,” he said, “she wants you to come home.”
