We went, that Tuesday, and many Tuesdays after it.

I will not pretend the sessions were comfortable, because they were not, and I will not pretend I came out of them unscathed, because the counselor, who was good, did not let me sit in the clean comfortable seat of the pure victim for long.

She asked me, gently, in the third or fourth week, why I had let it go on for two years, what I had been getting from the arrangement that had made it worth my dignity, and I did not like the question, and the not-liking was how I knew it was the right one.

I had been getting the feeling of being needed.