“He was crying,” he said, “because he could not bring himself to break your heart.” I fell silent.

The certainty went out of me all at once, drained away like water, and what was left in its place was a cold and dawning dread, the feeling of standing on a floor you had always trusted and feeling it begin, very slightly, to tilt.

“What are you talking about,” I whispered.

It was not really a question anymore.

Some part of me had already begun, in that quiet room, to understand that the answer was going to be the worst thing I had ever heard.

It is a peculiar experience, the moment before terrible news becomes fully real, the space between knowing that something is coming and knowing what it is.