I read them standing at my counter while Marcus folded a sandwich into a paper bag, and I felt the old pull, strong as a current, to type and type and type, to lay out every Friday and every bill and every time Lily had asked whether her grandparents were coming, to make twenty-three people understand.

Do not explain yourself to twenty-three people, Marcus said, not looking up from the bag.

Then what do I answer, I said.

The question you can prove, he said.

And that turned out to be the most useful sentence anyone gave me in the whole of it.

I did not have to answer the accusation that I had made things public, which was not provable either way and was really just a feeling wearing the costume of a fact.

I only had to be willing, to the few who actually asked, to show the dates.