“Every night.

After you thought I was asleep, I’d hear you come down to the kitchen, and I’d hear you crying, looking at that spreadsheet on the computer with all the numbers.

Every night.

I heard you.” And I understood, in that moment, the full and devastating extent of what my son had known, and for how long, and how completely I had failed to hide from him the very thing I had been so certain I was protecting him from.

That was its own particular heartbreak, tucked inside the larger one.