The author’s father in Syracuse, Sicily, in 1981.Credit...Carlos Luján for The New York Times. 

Somehow it was always my mother who answered the phone when he called. I remember his voice on the other end of the line, muffled in the receiver against her ear. Her eyes, just starting to show their wrinkles in those days, would fill with the memories that she shared with this man. She would put out her cigarette, grab a sheet of paper and scribble down the address. She would put down the receiver and look up at me. “It’s your dad,” she would say.

My Father Vanished When I Was 7. The Mystery Made Me Who I Am.  A piece of exceptional writing from The New York Times.