I want to say something about that loneliness, his and mine, because it is the soil the whole story grew in.

There is a particular kind of solitude that is not the same as simply being by yourself.

It is the solitude of the unclaimed, of the person who belongs to no one, who might vanish tomorrow and leave no gap in any other life.

I had felt it acutely since my mother died, the vertigo of realizing that there was now not one single person on earth for whom I was the most important thing, or even a very important thing.

I had become, in my own estimation, optional, a person the world would get along fine without.