I just disappeared and let you think the worst of me.” And then he told me his side, which I had never once made room to imagine, because it is a great deal more comfortable to be the wounded party than to consider that the person you are angry at is wounded too.

Terry had not simply stayed.

Terry had wanted to leave, once — had had a job offer in Denver at thirty-five, a good one, a life of his own opening up — and had turned it down, and had never told anyone why, and the why was that our mother had cried and said she couldn’t lose another one, meaning me, and Terry had done the math and understood that if he left, she would be alone, and so he had quietly closed the door on Denver and never mentioned it again.

He had given up a version of his life so I could keep mine, and I had never known, because saying it would have made it a debt, and Terry did not want to be owed.