In the April of 2007, Silas had an ear infection that would not clear and the clinic in Georgetown had sent three notices and the receptionist had telephoned, politely, from a script.

Four hundred and eighty dollars.

And I did the single most undignified thing I have ever done, and I have never regretted it, and I would do it again tomorrow.

I drove to the golf club on the edge of town at eleven in the morning on a Wednesday with a ten-month-old in my arms and walked across the gravel to the putting green.

Agnes was there with three women in matching linen visors.