“His mother called it wallowing in the mud, and by that Ferguson supposed she meant the mud of their unhappiness, but sinking into that unhappiness could be eerily satisfying, he discovered, as long as you sank into it as far as you could and weren’t afraid to drown, and because the tears kept pushing them back into the past, they had protected them from having to think about the future, but then one day his mother said it was time to start thinking about it, and the crying came to an end.”