Then he said he hadn’t known it still hurt, that he’d thought I’d made my peace with it, and that he was sorry, truly, that he’d let a sacrifice that size pass without a word.

And then he told me his — the thing he’d carried — which was a night twenty years ago when he’d tried to talk to me about how alone he felt, had worked up the nerve for once in his stoic life to actually say it, and I had been so tired and so stretched that I’d waved it off, told him we’d talk later, and rolled over to sleep.

He’d never tried again.

Twenty years of not trying again, because of one exhausted night I didn’t even remember.