That evening I offered to help my father get ready for bed, to help him bathe, and he recoiled so hard that the water glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the tile, and he pressed himself back against the wall and said, in a voice I will hear for the rest of my life, “Please.

Please don’t take off my coat.”

I got us into the bathroom and I locked the door, and I turned the shower on so the sound of the water would cover our voices, because whatever was happening in that house, I already knew it depended on my father being too afraid to speak, and I wanted him to know he could.

And then, gently, so gently, talking to him the whole time the way you’d talk to someone on a ledge, I helped him out of the coat he had not been able to let me take off.