So I stopped on day eleven, and I told myself it was respect, and my mother had handed me the word for it, and I used that word for six years.

Evelyn has never once thrown this at me.

Not in an argument, not in the worst week, not ever.

I brought it up myself, in the first year, in a kitchen, because it was eating me.

And what she said was: “Marcus, I’m not going to absolve you, because I don’t think that’s mine to do and I think you’d feel worse afterward.

“But I want you to hold two things at once, because you keep holding one.