He stood by that bed rail with his shirt out at one side and said: “That’s right.”

And then: “That’s exactly what I did.”

There is a version of my husband that I would have found much easier to deal with that morning, and it is the version that defended himself.

I had four and a half hours of material ready for that man.

I had the good line about the voicemail and I had used it already and I had three more.

What I had nothing prepared for was agreement.