I did it in a dining room in September of 2013 and it cost me a marriage, and I did it again at a fuel island in June of 2014 and it cost me seven years of my son.

My mother took two of the three.

I took the third one, in my own handwriting, and then I forgot it so thoroughly that eight years later I stood in a driveway and demanded that an old woman account for something I had done myself.

I photographed that page.

I have it on my phone.

I look at it about once a month, on purpose, and I am going to keep doing that for as long as it takes.

Part Nine: My Mother’s Reasons

I went back to Westlake ten days later and I let her talk, which is the only thing I did well in the whole of that November.

I had spent those ten days composing speeches.

I had a good one.