What about the two years before Thursday?”

I have had to sit with that for four years and I have arrived at something I can live with, which is not absolution and is not self-flagellation either.

I did not do the thing people accuse mothers of, which is that I did not know and look away.

I did not know.

There is nothing in that recording before the Thursday that I had seen, and there is no version of me that would have permitted it.

What I did was let the temperature drop.