One rainy evening Gabriel came by with a bag of picture books and stayed after Piper fell asleep.

We sat at Lena’s kitchen table, the same place where I had signed medical forms and made difficult phone calls for months.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

My stomach tightened.

I had learned to distrust sentences that began that way.

“Last year, Wyatt called me from a hotel.

He’d been drinking.

He said you were too attached to Piper and that he couldn’t breathe in his own house.”