True to his word, he turned up at our front door every single afternoon at two o’clock on the dot, taking over the twins, washing bottles and doing chores around the house while I worked.

We were going to weekly marriage counseling at a clinic downtown, slowly and painfully untangling the years of bad communication, cowardice and resentment that had poisoned our home.

I still couldn’t say for sure whether we would end up putting our marriage back together, but I had accepted that healing couldn’t be hurried along on a calendar.

Peter had also signed up for individual therapy to work on his chronic panic and his deep-rooted need to please his domineering mother at his own family’s expense.

Austin had started seeing a wonderful child counselor named Dr.