Lily went in June. She told her father she was going, and she told him he was not coming, and Daniel — who had spent two years learning this and was still bad at it — said, “Okay,” and then said four other things, and then said, “Sorry.

Okay.”

She was there fourteen minutes.

I’ll do this part.

She looked smaller and that’s the only cliché I’m going to allow myself, because it’s true and because it stopped mattering about ninety seconds in.

She let me in. She’d been expecting me — I’d written, I didn’t ambush her — and she’d made a coffee cake, which I did not eat, which I think was the only cruel thing I did the whole time and I’d do it again.