There was only a good woman in pain, and a husband who almost missed it.

That is the part I keep circling back to, the part I want Colm to understand someday when he’s old enough.

Every instinct I had was built for a world with a villain in it — a betrayer to catch, a rival to confront, a wrong to be avenged.

I had a whole story ready, and it had a bad guy, and it gave me somewhere to put the fear: onto a man named N who was going to answer for what he’d done to my family.

And the story was completely false.

There was no man.