If she had noticed it — if she had seen my dead son’s crayon dinosaur hanging behind her head and felt even a flicker of shame, even enough shame to move three feet to the left so it would not be in the shot — I could almost have understood her as a human being who had done a terrible thing.

But she did not move.

She did not notice.

My child’s last drawing, taped up by his own small hands, was part of the decor to her, part of the pleasant domestic backdrop of her beautiful second chapter, no more notable than the cabinets or the tile.

That is the desecration.

Not malice — malice would at least have registered Leo as real enough to spite.