It was October, six weeks after I put the envelope on Dorothy Klein's desk, and I had finally started to feel like a person with a future instead of a person with a file.
That is exactly how these things work. You get a quiet morning, and you start to think the water is done moving.
I was driving Marcus to the airport. He had been visiting for the weekend, doing the thing we do once a year, eating too much and arguing about the football team and not talking about our father, which is our favorite tradition. His flight was at 5:40 in the morning, which is why we were on the highway at four in the dark, both of us silent, both of us holding travel mugs.
"You're quiet," he said.
"I'm always quiet in the morning."
"You're quiet like something's on your mind." He glanced at me. "It's not h
