Finding Family, Part One: The Man Who Wasn’t There

The clues to my father’s identity didn’t mean a thing — until I knew to look.

The story of my family doesn’t begin with four Cuban men standing on a beach in Miami comparing feet, but some part of it is anchored there forever. It was one of a few moments in my childhood that could have revealed the truth, the existence of parallel life narratives starring two different fathers. It was a moment that at once said too much and too little, a blip in time that became key to the narrative a decade…