Fenella says I’ve lost her to the Army.

She doesn’t understand that a daughter isn’t lost when she learns to stand on her own feet. I had to close the journal for a moment.

It was, I understood as I turned the pages, a record of a man being lonely in his own house.

He had known for years what his wife had done and what she was, and he had carried it beside her at every dinner and every holiday, smiling for the sake of the children, saying nothing that would detonate the fragile thing his family was.

There were entries where his restraint nearly gave way — I want to put it all in front of her and watch her try to lie her way out for once — followed, a line later, by the reason he never did: But then Fergus loses a mother, and Katya loses her peace, and I’ve turned my whole family into a courtroom.