It was a hard gift.

Most of the real ones are.

And there it was, out in the open at last, the tear we had both been pretending was just the shape of the cloth.

Chapter 13 — Mending the Sleeve

We didn’t fix it that afternoon.

That is not how it goes, and I had stopped believing in the kind of fixing that happens all at once.

But we made a start, which is a different and more honest thing.