“How does she — how does that fit?

Where does that go?”

“I don’t know,” my father said.

“I want to be honest with you because I’ve spent my life not being.

I have had thirty-one years to make that fit somewhere, and I never could, and I’m not going to pretend to you now that I’ve got it worked out.”

He turned one of the folders around and squared it against the table edge, the way he does.