He emphasized I didn’t owe him a conversation and could communicate through counsel.

I decided to write, not because I hoped to change my son overnight, but because I needed to hear my own words.

I began with a Sunday from thirty years earlier.

Daniel had been eight.

We’d been living in that Columbus apartment, and the electricity had gone out during a storm.

He was frightened of the dark, so I lit two candles and made shadow animals against the wall.

We ate crackers with peanut butter and pretended it was a feast.