I have gone back over that year a thousand times since, looking for the moment I could have caught it, and the terrible truth is that there was no single moment.

There were dozens.

The long sleeves in July.

The weight falling off my wife.

The way Elodie went quiet and still whenever my mother’s step sounded in the hall — a child does not learn that kind of stillness from kindness.

Every one of those was a signal, plain as a struck bell, and I received every one of them and filed it, without quite admitting I was filing it, under the heading of things that would be inconvenient to be true.