“I’m mad at myself.”

She didn’t tell me I shouldn’t feel that way.

She only said, “Then let’s make sure he hears the first part a lot more than the second.”

I went home and phoned the speech therapist who had worked with Finn for two years.

I had ended the sessions in the spring because Brandi told me he didn’t need them anymore.

She had said it so smoothly that I believed her, because believing her was easier than driving home from a rig in the middle of the Gulf.