“I don’t mean that as an excuse. I mean I genuinely don’t know how. I’ve had it in a box for twenty years, Sabrina. I don’t know how to give it out in reasonable amounts.

I only know how to give all of it.”

And she said, “Then that’s the thing we have to work on,” which is a sentence a twenty-seven-year-old should not have had to construct at midnight.

We agreed on three things, sitting there. I wrote them on the back of an envelope, which she found hilarious, and which I still have.

One: Ava’s medical, food, and sleep decisions were Sabrina’s. Full stop. I could ask questions and I could be wrong out loud and it stopped there.

Two: if I did the thing — the helping-before-asking thing — she would say the word envelope, and I would stop, and I would not require her to explain it in the moment.