was on a list of three that somebody else wrote in a hospital in the April, and I did not understand until about a year later that it was my grandfather’s middle name.

PART 2

PART 2

The next ten years were the hardest of my life and I am not going to make them sound noble.

Two jobs. Community college, which took me five years instead of two. Awake until two most nights at a kitchen table and asleep only when my body took the decision out of my hands.

There were months I genuinely did not know how we were going to manage, and there was one winter I would rather not write down.

And every single time I looked at that boy I found another reason.

He is clever. He is kind in a way that is entirely his own doing. He notices far more than a