Oliver’s needs come first.

Any contact will need to respect that.

Her response was a simple: I understand.

I didn’t know whether she truly did.

Apologies would need to be followed by behavior.

Still, the exchange was different from the conversations I’d been forced to have in the past, where my pain was always measured against someone else’s embarrassment.

That night Oliver fell asleep with his hand wrapped around one of my fingers.

I watched the rain run down the window and understood how profoundly my life had changed in a few months.