And then she said the thing that has done more work on me than anything anybody has said in eighteen months, including a professional I pay.

She said: “You know what the worst part of this is?

It’s not that you left it out.

“It’s that you kept the notebook for six more years after you left it out.

You knew there was a hole in it and you kept writing in it every day until 2019.

“Dad, what did you think you were doing?”

And I said, honestly, for the first time: “I think I was making sure the story stayed true.”

And Odile said, “Yeah,” and put the notebooks back in the bag, and we did the rest of the closet.