And I need to put down the thing I understood as he said that, because it changed how I have thought about my marriage ever since and because it is not flattering to either of us.

He did not mean that my word was worth less than his mother’s.

He meant something stranger and more frightening, which is that my word on this particular subject had been removed from evidence years earlier, by both of us, without either of us noticing.

Because for ten years I had been the person who told him it was not his fault.

Every time.