I have been asked to speak at three graduations on the strength of forty seconds of footage.

I know how to tell it. I know exactly where the laugh is and exactly where the room goes quiet.

And I sat there with my sister’s thirteen years on the desk and understood that tearing it up would be a performance of the person I’d already been paid to be.

It would feel *magnificent.* It would cost a clinic ninety-one thousand dollars.

Refusing my father’s money was a moral act because his money was a purchase.

Refusing Megan’s would be a purchase too. I’d be buying the feeling of being the one who was wronged, and I’d be buying it with April, May, and June.