By 2019 I did not answer unknown numbers. I had a rule. Ruthanne helped me make the rule; it was, at the time, a sign of progress.

So it is nobody’s fault. Not mine, not Daniel’s, not Caleb’s, not the woman who wanted three hundred dollars.

That is what makes it unsurvivable. If there were somebody to be angry at I would have somewhere to put it.

I told the children on a Sunday. All three, at the table, at once, with no preparation and no soft opening, because I had spent five years learning what happens when I decide what people can handle.

Noah said, “Four rings,” and put his head down on the table and stayed there.

Ethan asked one question — “Was he going to come home, or was he calling to tell you where we were?” — and I said I didn’t know and would never know, and he nodded and said, “Okay.