Do you think a check erases the days they came home asking why other boys had fathers to play catch with, and they didn’t?”

She was not finished, and I did not want her to be, because every word was a knife and every knife was the truth and I had come there to be cut.

“You want to know what it was like,” she said, quieter now, which was worse.

“The first year I worked three jobs.

I cleaned offices at night with the boys asleep in a stroller in the corner because I couldn’t afford a sitter and couldn’t afford to say no to the shift.

I learned to sew because new clothes were impossible and secondhand ones needed mending.