My son’s best friend read the eulogy at his funeral in a red dress. I’ve known Wes since he was seven. He lives four houses down. He’s slept in our spare room more times than I could count, and he was at our table three Christmases in a row when things were bad at his house. And when Miles got sick, Wes was there every single day.

We found out late. Too late, as it turned out, and the treatment never caught up with it. Fourteen months. Wes sat on that bedroom floor through all of it. He did homework there. He fell asleep there. There were weeks he saw my son more than I did. So when he walked in like that, I didn’t understand. I thought maybe they’d fallen out and nobody had told me…