The other thing that happened that month is that thirty-two people had to decide what they thought.

I have come to believe this is the least-discussed part of any family rupture.

Everybody imagines the confrontation.

Nobody warns you about the four weeks afterward, in which every single person you have known for thirteen years quietly works out where they are going to stand, and then stands there for the rest of your life.

Roughly eleven of them contacted me.

Some of it was extraordinary.