I am not asking you to fix it, I told her, because I could hear her reaching for the apology that would make her feel better and me feel managed.

Then what are you asking, she said.

I want to know what people were told, I said.

That was all.

Not an apology, not a reversal, just the plain record of what version of me had been quietly handed around a family while I sat at my own kitchen table every Friday sending out five hundred and fifty dollars and keeping, like a fool, like a loyal fool, the whole thing private.

Chapter 15 — Dad Told Me You Stopped