“That’s not a consolation prize, Wes.

That’s the actual thing.

It’s just not the shape you wanted.”

I have not asked again.

I said I would not and I have not, and that is not restraint, it is that she was right and I knew it in the shop.

She married Denny Sorrels two and a half years later, in a backyard in Manor, about forty people.

I was there.

Beto was eleven and stood next to his mother in a shirt that he had picked and that was, in his view, extremely serious.

I am not going to pretend it was an easy afternoon.

It was not, and I stood at the back for the ceremony part, and at one point I went and looked at a fence for four or five minutes.