The intake of breath from the gallery was audible.

Nolan wasn’t finished. “He told me to take the shirt off. Then he threw it in his big silver trash can in his kitchen. He said he’d buy me a better one that didn’t make us look like beggars.”

I remembered that weekend. Nolan had come home unusually quiet, clutching his duffel bag to his chest.

“When Dad went to his office to make a phone call,” Nolan said, looking down at his shoes, “I sneaked back into the kitchen. I dug through the coffee grounds and the garbage and pulled my shirt out. That’s why the bottom’s a little stretched out. I pulled it out of the trash and hid it in my bag so Mom wouldn’t know Dad tried to throw away the moon.”

Behind the wooden railing, my mother let out a quiet, heartbroken sob.

Grant hadn’t only tried to starve me, frame me, and buy my landlord. He had tried to destroy the physical evidence of his son’s love for me, because it didn’t fit his narrative of my failure.