Every book begins somewhere. This one began on a night in December, when I could not sleep and did not want to.

I had been carrying the idea for a long time — the way you carry something you are not sure you deserve to put down. A man and his fear. A marriage that holds. A faith that does not fix things but stays present. I kept waiting for the right moment to write it, which is to say I kept not writing it.

Then my mother died. And after that, there was nothing left to wait for.

I wrote the first draft by hand. There was something about the slowness of it — the way the pen forces you to mean what you say — that felt right for this particular story. I did not want to write fast. I wanted to be inside each sentence long enough to know if it was true.

I am glad I finally wrote it. I hope it finds the people who need it.