I telephoned her in April and asked her directly and she was quiet for a bit and then she said, “Oh — I did that for a number of them.

I had four or five in there most years.”

Four or five, most years, for thirteen years.

Part Fifteen: The Last Year

It stopped in his senior year and I spent eleven years believing I knew why, and I was wrong about that too.

What I believed was that it stopped because he grew.

Julian went from five foot eight to six foot two between the March of 2013 and the September of 2013, which is a thing that happens to boys and which happened to him very fast, and he came back after that summer looking like a different person.

That is the version I told people for a decade.