Around my parents I felt out of place, as usual: the only child of two people who had never really taken stock of the person I was. I feared I’d betrayed them just as I’d feared long ago I’d betrayed my best friend; every time I went back to that town I thought of the day I sat on the edge of her bed, feeling doomed already in that room with its sour smell, and the way her parents had looked at me askance, and how she’d declared: You’ve ruined everything.
