Mark
I told myself the pullback started because of the board meeting, the one where a different donor, this time a woman named Eleanor Voss who'd given more to the institute over the years than almost anyone else on our list, made an offhand comment about how nice it was to see me looking so invested in the pediatric project lately, invested in a way she hadn't seen from me in years. She'd meant it as a compliment. It had landed in my chest like a warning.
I told myself that was the reason, and for a few days I almost believed it.
The truth was more complicated, and it had been sitting under the surface since the morning after the rain, since I'd watched Sophia laugh in my kitchen wrapped in my shirt, since some part of me that had spent twenty years perfecting the art of not needing an
