I’m the woman who was married to the man who stole him and who spent his childhood telling him a lie about his own name.

“And I had already lost my marriage and my mother’s health and my whole idea of myself, and he was the only thing left, and I was terrified, and so I put a shoebox in a closet.”

She wiped her face with the flat of her hand.

“I didn’t do it because I’m cruel.

I did it because I was scared, and being scared for seven years in a row looks exactly like being cruel from the outside, and I’ve stopped arguing about the difference.”

I sat there for a long time.