I had made myself the opposite.

And my daughter had risked her father’s love, and then her own safety, to protect me anyway — and that is either the great failure of my life or the great mercy of it, and most days I think it is both.

I have talked to other men since — Thomas Parker was only the first — and I have come to believe that this is the cruelest part of what women like Rebecca do, crueler even than the theft.

They do not only rob you.