That is the most honest thing I can say about surviving.

But the conclusion never sat right in me.

I accepted it the way you accept a coat that does not fit because it is the only coat you have been given and the cold is real.

I wore it for six years.

And underneath it, all that time, one question went on scratching quietly at the back of my mind, refusing to be soothed by any amount of official certainty, waiting with a patience I did not know it had for the day someone would finally hand me the answer it had always known was out there.

Chapter 8 — The Question That Would Not Rest