And when people hear this story they always say the same admiring thing about the fact that I finally came, and I have stopped accepting it, because the number that actually describes me is not seven and it is not eleven days of rehearsing.

It is the three years and eleven months in which I knew, and did nothing, because I could not stand the size of the apology.

Part Seven: The Kitchen

Inside that house it was eighty degrees and smelled of burnt sugar and there was a cartoon going in the other room.

She put me at the kitchen table like a plumber.

Leo came in twice.