I know that now.

It is that handing somebody a cup ends the conversation about whether they need one.

Part Forty-Six: What I Asked Him

Here is where I depart from the version of this that I used to tell, and where I want to correct something I got wrong for about a year.

For a while I told this story as though the lesson were restraint.

As though the whole point was that I sat there and did not offer, because he had written ask them what they want on the last page and I had finally learned not to impose.