"I was fucking terrified when they handed you off to me."

No eye contact. No change in tone.

"Probably took three months to get over that. Finally started changing to...maybe if I did okay with just this one thing, out of all the other shit going on, that'd make up for it. As long as I didn't fuck this up I'd be okay."

Curtis shakes his head, heavy, ponderous.

"'Cept I'd already permanently fucked everything up. There's no fixing that. If nothing else I probably should've stopped trying when you finished growing up."