“I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him” — Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart I’ve encountered many ghosts in my life. Not all of them friendly. Not all of them dead. My father is dead in every way except the physical. His heart still beats. His lungs still fill with air. He moves through his days beneath the same sun as I do. The man lives. The father does not. I killed him. For years, I carried him like a diseased limb—attached to