My husband refused to walk my 17-year-old daughter, his stepdaughter for nine years, at her high school senior night. “That’s something a real father should do,” he told her. But when her name was announced Thursday evening, her 79-year-old grandfather appeared with his walking cane and proudly accompanied her onto the court.

So I scraped the pan. And I waited.

I’m not sure that was right. It might’ve been a kind of pride.

But that’s the truth of why I kept my mouth shut.

My name is Jodi Brandt. I’m forty-one years old. I’m a dental hygienist in a little town in southern Minnesota, about forty minutes from Mankato.

And I need to tell you about Kaylee’s father. Because Travis wasn’t wrong that there was one.

His name is Ryan. We got married young. Twenty-two. In the Lutheran church I grew up in.

Ryan took a job in the North Dakota oil fields when Kaylee was four.

The money was good. And the distance turned out to be even better. For him.

He came home less. Then not at all.