It was that she had, with exquisite cruelty, made me an accomplice in my own robbery.

I had chosen that granite stone.

I had chosen the words carved on it.

I had knelt at that grave every weekend for seven years and spoken to my living son as though he were ash, had brought flowers to a box of gravel, had built my grief into a shrine at the exact spot designed to make sure I never went looking for him.

She had not merely taken him.