I want to be extremely clear about that, because it matters to the legal question and because it matters to me.

He did not ask.

He sat on the end of a bed and said he did not know what to do, and I lay there for about two hours that night, and in the morning I said, “I’ll sell my parents’ house.”

And he said, “Evelyn, no.”

And he meant it.

That is the part that took me two years to be able to say out loud.

He meant it at that moment, on that morning, entirely.