The first is that for about eight months I could not stop going over the four times I said no about the deed.

Not with relief.

With a kind of horror.

Because I had no reason.

I have made a career out of reasons — I do drawings, I do load paths, I do things that stand up — and the single decision that saved my life and my father’s house was made four times on a feeling in my chest that I could not have defended to anybody.

My therapist let me go round that for a long time and then said one thing.