When Doris Dakkar’s husband, Robert, walked out without warning, he didn’t just leave behind a wife and a seven-year-old son—he left behind a woman who refused to let heartbreak define her, and a child who would one day wrestle with the weight of that decision.
In a cramped apartment, Doris rebuilt their lives from the ground up. She juggled two jobs, packed her son Nicholas’s school lunches with handwritten notes, and cheered him on at every school play and baseball game. “We may be a family of two,” she used to tell him, “but we’re a strong family of two.”.