And from each of them a small graceful swerve, a cake, a coupon, a guest list, a strong-word, an ask-her, an ask-him, the question handed back and forth between them like a plate neither wanted to be holding when the music stopped.

I had spent three years reading that as the ordinary vagueness of parents who did not keep careful books.

Sitting at my table that night I let myself consider, for the first time, the other possibility, which was that the vagueness was not a failure to have an answer.

It was the answer.

You do not fumble a question this many times by accident.

You fumble it on purpose when the true answer is one you have decided the person asking is not allowed to have.