Coraline would come home from a double shift with her feet swollen and her hands raw, and cook on that rusted stove, and I would sit in my failure and my self-pity and let her, and take her tenderness as my due, and give back complaints about investors who would not see my genius.

She loved me through all of it — that is the thing I cannot get over, even now.

She loved the worst version of me, the broke and bitter and self-important version, the version no one else could stand to be near.

She looked at that man and saw someone worth warming her hands for.

And what I did, when the chance came, was take that love — the purest thing I have ever been given — and weigh it on a scale against a trust fund, and find it lighter.

I have done many shameful things in my life.