By one friend of mine who should have known better.

And the answer is that I was not withholding it.

I did love him.

I loved him lying in that bed and I loved him while he put a finger on our daughter’s foot and I loved him while the door shut, and I have never at any point in any of this stopped, which is the inconvenient part and the part that nobody wants in the story.

But he had just stood in a hospital room and said a true thing that was supposed to function as a solution.