The sentences are survivable.

It is that eventually you start doing the work yourself.

By year four I had a version of that night in my head that I had built out of Gertrude’s material — the fourteen-hour days I’d been putting in at the end of that quarter, the boxes I had carried up the stairs at seven months, the fact that I had not gone to the appointment on the Thursday because of a client meeting.

By year six I no longer needed my mother-in-law to say it.