“He’s going to play catch with me,” Matthias announced, and I noticed — I noticed and I said nothing — that he said my son, never our son.

I filed the small wound away with all the others.

I had gotten very good, over nine years of marriage, at filing away small wounds.

It is a skill that feels like patience while you are doing it.

Only later do you understand it was something closer to disappearing.

I want to tell you what those eight years of “next time” were actually like, because the phrase sounds gentle and it was not.