She said it at two in the morning to end a conversation, which is what my mother says things for, and it worked, and I carried it as an atrocity for eighteen years because I never once checked a date.

Part Four: The Kitchen

My father followed me out to the kitchen, which he had not done in about four years.

The kitchen smelled of old coffee and bleach.

He stood at the zinc sink with a blue glass pitcher, pouring water into a mug very slowly, looking out the window at the spruce.

I said: “Thaddeus.

I need five hundred dollars.

A crib, a car seat, formula.