And I said all the wrong things.

I said that she was probably embarrassed, which was true but was not it.

I said that she was going through a lot, which is the thing adults say when they have run out.

I said that it would blow over.

What had actually happened is the thing I told you in the part about the doorway, and I only know it because a fifteen-year-old girl explained it to me at my own kitchen table about sixteen months later with a glass of apple juice in her hand, and because she is one of the two most articulate people in this entire story.

She said: “I wasn’t angry with him.