It is the grief of losing the suspicion itself, which, as long as it stayed a suspicion, you could argue with.

For years I had been able to tell myself that I was imagining the tilt of things, that my father did not really favor Danny over me, that I was being sensitive, that the comparison lived only in my own insecure head.

My mother had helped me tell myself that; so had my father; the whole family had, gently, by treating any mention of it as my problem rather than theirs.

We do not count your family the same.