He lived with his mother, Loreen, in a small house behind his uncle’s repair shop. His father had left when he was eight, not dramatically, not with shouting, not with broken plates. He had simply one day stopped being there. Those people do more damage than the loud ones. The loud ones at least leave you with noise. The quiet ones leave you with a void and the stupid need to spend years wondering whether it was your fault.

Loreen worked double shifts at a nursing home and came back smelling of antiseptic, coffee, and exhaustion. She loved her son in that tired, graceless way of people who do not have time to make their love elegant.