My Wife Woke in a Hospital Bed, Saw the Tattoo I’d Hidden for Four Years, and Instead of Asking Me to Make Them Disappear, She Said the Six Words That Set Me Free: “No Bodies. Ruin Them in the Light.”

I want that on the record.

For one long moment I was the old name again, and the old name had already decided.

And then my wife’s breath rattled behind me, small and alive, and it called me back to the man I was trying to be, and I picked her up instead of picking up the phone that would have summoned the dark.

It was the hardest thing I have ever done.

It was also, I understand now, the first genuinely good one.