Part Eleven: What She Said

I have read her statement.

I read it in a lawyer’s office fourteen months later, and it took me about forty minutes, and I had to stop twice.

The substance of it is this.

She was thirty-nine.

She had watched me go through six years and three rounds and she had drawn a conclusion from it, which was that if it took her a year, or two, or three, Christopher would not wait — because she had watched him not wait for me.

That is the sentence in her statement that I could not get past, and I have quoted it to exactly two people.