And then we start on the actual work, which is the grant application and the transportation voucher and the number for Bev Larkin in Columbia, who will put you on a list and who does not charge for the re-tie at two years.

Gavin comes home at six. The shop has nine employees now.

We kept the house, which I have complicated feelings about, and there is a page in a courthouse in Greene County with my husband’s signature on it admitting exactly how we got it, and I sleep better for that page than I would have for the money.

Margaret sends a card at Christmas. I read them. I don’t write back yet. Bev would tell me that isn’t the same as never.

Paige, I don’t know about. That’s not quite true.

In March a woman came through intake at the center — not Paige, a stranger, forty-one, two kids — and somewhere in the forty minutes she mentioned that her sister-in-law had told her the whole thing was probably in her head.