We stayed in the hotel for nine nights and then in Naomi’s spare room for five weeks, which is not a thing lawyers are supposed to do and which she did anyway.

Then we rented a two-bedroom on Aldrich in south Minneapolis, and when the apartment finally sold in the November, I bought a small house in the same neighborhood with a yellow door and a kitchen that gets the morning.

People ask why I stayed in Minneapolis.

There is a version of this story where we move somewhere with a fresh start in it, and I understand the appeal.

I stayed because my daughter had a therapist she trusted forty minutes after meeting, and because moving her would have meant a new school and a new doctor and a new everything at exactly the moment when what she needed was for the world to become extremely predictable.

And because of a thing Dr.