But the levers no longer connected to anything.

That was the discovery of those days, the thing that still amazes me: that the guilt and the obligation and the family-loyalty that had governed me for twenty-eight years had quietly stopped working, the way a key stops working in a lock that has been changed.

I did not reply.

I tapped her contact name, and I pressed Block, and I set the phone face down on the nightstand, and I turned back to my son.

It was the easiest thing I have ever done.