Her head came up. “Because there’s a nine-year-old on my schedule at three o’clock whose mother has been splitting his inhalers,” I said.

“And because if I make this about my feelings then I’m doing exactly what Dad did in Room 314, which is decide what a child is worth based on how it makes me look.”

Megan’s face did something complicated and she got it under control fast.

I asked her one more thing before she left, because I had been carrying it for five years and there was never going to be a better moment.

“At the graduation. You walked out first, before Mom and Dad. Everyone in that room read it the same way. Even I did. She’s leaving because it’s embarrassing.”

“I went to the parking lot,” Megan said, “and I threw up next to a hedge, and then I sat in my car for two hours.”