Growing up, I had what most people would have called a perfect childhood.

We had money, quite a bit of it.

We lived in a house with high windows, soft carpet, and a backyard big enough to forget where the edges were.

My father, Jonathan, was a quiet man.

He led prayer every morning before school and every night before bed.

And he spoke with conviction.

My mother was grace in motion.

She read poetry, cooked like she had studied it, and always seemed to know what I was feeling before I said a word.

I loved them both deeply, without question.

They didn't hide things from each other, but hid one thing from me.

There was a strange man that lived with us. but hid one thing from me.

There was a strange man that lived with us. Perhaps that's the wrong word.

He existed in our house, always on the edge of where light ended.

He rarely appeared as a full apparation. Sometimes he was just a flicker

in the corner of a mirror. Sometimes it was deeper, shadows that didn't move when the sun did,

or the smell of smoke in a room where nothing had burned. And he scared me.

While my dad and I were cleaning out the garage,

I had worked up the courage after an afternoon of silence

to ask him who the man was.

He stopped stacking the boxes, straightened his back,

and smiled at me.

That's your uncle, he said without hesitation. He doesn't mean you harm.

...