"This isn't neglect," he said, at one point, holding the urgent care record from the fever. "This is a woman managing a household completely alone and still getting it right."
"I know that," I said.
"I know you know it," he said. "I'm saying it anyway. Out loud matters."
It didn't matter. I felt the truth of it settling somewhere underneath the raw place the filing had carved out, slow and steady, each card we went through taking back a small piece of the narrative Sherry had signed her name to without context.
By the time we'd gone through the full box, the distorted version had stopped having the same weight.
It hadn't disappeared. I didn't expect it to disappear, not in one night, not from one conversation. But it had shrunk, somehow, sitting beside the actual evidence of three yea
