MICHAEL HAD ALWAYS RELIED UPON A STAFF member who was also a trusted ally—a kind of buffer between him and the rest of the world. It felt perfectly natural to step into the place he had created for me; though it took some time, I became not only his ally on the staff but his protector as well.

   At first, our professional relationship experienced some growing pains. Building my character had long been a project of sorts for him, and his efforts to mold me continued with my change in status. When it came to work, Michael enforced firm rules. For starters, he told me we had to keep our friendship separate from our working relationship. He didn’t want the staff to see us hanging out as we once had, not while I was on the job, and even asked me to call him Mr. Jackson when I was arranging a meeting for him. This seemed like a reasonable request, and I understood his rationale, but still, it felt strange for someone who was so used to calling him “Applehead,” or whatever name came to mind in the moment. I had so many nicknames for him, but now I had to impose an artificial distance between us. As much as Michael fancied himself a Peter Pan figure, his ongoing influence on my intellectual, spiritual, and now professional development showed that he had always expected me to grow up eventually. Especially now that he needed my help. There were moments when Michael was strict with me. It wasn’t a radical shift—he’d always been strict in certain areas: educating oneself, respecting one’s parents, not doing drugs, and so on. But now the terrain had changed.

   That fall, my entire family met up with Michael and me at Disneyland Paris, one of Michael’s favorite escapes. Just a year or so before I’d begun working for him, I’d been there with Michael and Eddie and we’d had one of our amazing midnight adventures. After hours, we sneaked from the hotel into the park—something we did frequently over the years (knowing, of course, that if we got busted, Michael had something akin to diplomatic immunity). We loved the thrill of getting away with something we knew we weren’t supposed to be doing.

   All the rides were closed, of course, but during the night many of them were put through routine maintenance runs. We saw that “Pirates of the Caribbean” was moving, so we slipped past the maintenance workers and hopped on one of the boats that floated in a line through the animatronic-pirate-infested lagoon. We jumped from boat to boat, then leaped onto the exhibit to steal some treasure.

   The pack of boats started floating away. We hurried to jump back in, and Eddie and I made it onto the last boat. Michael, who was behind us, leaped toward the boat and … didn’t quite make it. For a moment he clung to the stern of the boat, his legs dangling into the lagoon; then he lost his grip and slid into the waist-deep water. When he emerged, his pajama pants were soaking wet. He was holding his fedora, which had fallen into the lagoon. He slowly dumped a gallon of water out of it. I had never seen anything so funny. Only a year had passed since then, but during this trip to Disneyland Paris, I was working for Michael. For the first time in our travels, I had my own hotel room. It made sense that Michael and I would no longer share a suite: not only was it more professional, but I was older and wanted my independence and privacy. But that wasn’t the only shift that came with my new position.

   On the first night, my family had gathered in Michael’s room. I called Michael and asked, “Can I come over?”

   “No, not now,” he said. “You’re working.”

   “But everyone’s here!” I protested. Michael had never before denied me access, and I was mystified. Work could wait. It seemed obvious that I belonged with him and my family, and I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want me there.

   “What would you think if security waltzed in and started hanging out?” Michael said. “Trust me. I’m doing this for a reason. It’s for your own good.”

   It took me a while to see his point, but eventually it sank in. This was his way of demonstrating that it was time for me to step out of childhood and assume responsibility. Work involves discipline. It doesn’t stop just because something fun comes up. This is something that most people absorb at their first jobs, and Michael wanted me to learn the normal lessons of the working world. He took responsibility for helping me transition to adulthood, something I appreciate now much more than I did back then.

   I wasn’t the only one who had to get used to my new position. Wayne Nagin, the personal security guard who had met me at airports and supervised me in various ways throughout my childhood, was now Michael’s business manager. I loved Wayne. He was practically family to me, too. But now that I had become Michael’s mouthpiece, there were times when I had to call Wayne to follow up on his work. Michael would want to know whether his financial manager, Myung-Ho Lee, had finalized a deal, or why it was taking so long to get the contract signed. This might not have been such a big deal, but if it was three in the morning and he had a question for Wayne, Michael wanted an answer right away. So now this kid was hassling Wayne at all hours. I was polite, of course, but Wayne was not thrilled. In fact, he called Michael and told him that he didn’t want his orders to come from me. He wanted Michael to call him directly. But Michael didn’t go for that.

   “I don’t always have time to get on a call with you,” he told Wayne. “Speaking with Frank is like speaking to me.” Michael defended me and my position, but for a while there was some tension between me and Wayne, whom I really liked and respected. Though there was never an official job description, Michael liked having me represent him. Because he’d helped to raise me, my interactions with people echoed the courtesy he always showed his employees and associates, and he knew that I would persist until I saw that his requests had been fulfilled. Above all, I had demonstrated my discretion and loyalty through all the years of our friendship, and he knew it was at the core of who I was.

   I was young for my position, and too many people knew it. The fans and media recognized me as Frank Cascio, a kid who was Michael’s friend. Now that I was working with him, I didn’t want to be seen as that kid anymore. Plus, I wanted to emphasize the line that I had already drawn between my life with Michael and my life with my friends and family. One night, as Michael and I were watching TV at Neverland, I had an idea for how to delineate my new role. Ever since I was a kid, Michael and I had introduced ourselves to different people with made-up names, partly because it was always easier for him to be incognito, and partly for the fun of it. Now I said, “Do you think I should change my name to differentiate family and work?”

   Michael turned to look at me, nodded his head slowly, and said, “Do what you want. It’s a good idea.” Just then a commercial came on for Tyson chicken.

   I said, “Frank Tyson. Perfect.” From then on, I introduced myself as Frank Tyson, or just Tyson. It was my professional alias. I had entered a new world. I was no longer a kid from New Jersey whose family happened to be friends with a world-famous star. Now I was an adult with responsibility. I worked for Michael Jackson. I was a trusted ally, positioned to help him personally run the day-to-day business of his life. Nobody called me Frank Cascio anymore. My name, plucked (no pun intended) from a chicken commercial, was Frank Tyson.

   With my new identity, representing Michael out in the world grew into my primary responsibility. Some people were surprised when they met me for the first time. One of my early assignments was to work on a deal with Mercedes to do a special line of Michael Jackson SLRs. I was handling all the negotiations with Ferdinand Froning, head of Mercedes’ entertainment liaison office, and I was assertive on the phone. Then I met Ferdinand in person at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York. He came up to the suite, and we all got down to business. Suddenly Ferdinand interrupted me while I was speaking: “Hold on,” he exclaimed. “Wait a second. You’re Frank Tyson?”

   “Yes,” I said.

   He said, “So you’re the one who’s been giving me such a hard time on the phone?” We all started laughing, and Michael told him not to let my appearance fool him.

   At the same time, my new position of power was readily apparent to those who wanted Michael as a partner. After another meeting at the Four Seasons, a businessman who was eager to make a deal with Michael handed me a briefcase full of money. He said, “This is for you. We really need Michael to be part of this company.”

   “Listen,” I said, “I don’t want your money. If a deal happens, it happens, but I can’t be a part of this.”

   Later I told Michael what had happened.

   “We can’t do business with these people,” I said without hesitation. “They just offered me cash. I turned it down, of course.” “Thank you,” Michael said. “If it was anyone else, they would have taken the money. You see what I deal with? This has been happening forever. Everyone takes kickbacks. I appreciate your honesty.”

   He said that it happened all the time, and named a few of his closest employees who had been taking kickbacks for years. I was shocked that this actually went on. It was criminal.

   Despite our transparency and professionalism, Michael and I still shared the same jokey rapport we’d always had. I quickly developed a sense of when it was appropriate to be serious and when it was okay to have some fun. I had a great propensity for milking random jokes or pranks for all they were worth. We went through one phase when I always greeted Michael with a weird handshake that wasn’t actually a handshake, and is pretty hard to explain. It involved elbows. Then Michael had a thing where while I was talking to someone he’d stand behind the person, pretending he was kicking his ass. At Disneyland, we’d pretend to kick Mickey Mouse’s ass.

   Of course, Michael and I still loved to mess with strangers. One time we were antiques shopping in New York. I was wearing a suit and tie. In a broken, generically foreign accent I said to a vendor, “I must go—for my religion—I have to throw the chicken from the roof. It’s very good luck. I have to do it at seven-thirty or else it’s very bad luck.”

   As always, Michael was right there with me. He joined in, saying, “Yes, he’s very spiritual. It’s very important for his culture. I must support him in throwing the chicken off the roof.” People believed us, and we loved having that shared, secret understanding that we were the only ones in on the joke.

   Every so often, fans were allowed to visit Michael in his hotel room. We called the girls fish—because there were lots of fish in the sea—and we called the most aggressive ones barracudas. We’d fight over them, joking about which girl was for him and who was for me. I’d say, “Let’s be realistic, you’re just the decoy.” That’s why on the Invincible album notes when he thanked me he wrote, “Stop fishing.” Over the years, Michael grew close to some fans and occasionally had casual girlfriends, but he was a married man, so nothing untoward happened.

   We always tried to embarrass each other in front of women. I was shy—in many ways I still am—and knowing this, Michael would put me on the spot with women, saying, “Frank thinks you’re beautiful. He wants to kiss you.” Or we’d be standing in the back of an elevator car behind an attractive hotel maid, and I’d feel Michael subtly nudging my hand toward the girl’s butt. I’d shake him off before the girl noticed. It was juvenile—maintaining this private exchange that kept the girls at a distance.

   It was silly, pointless, fun stuff, but when he wasn’t teaching me the boundaries of my new position, Michael still just wanted to be a ten-year-old kid. To be himself. My role was to be beside him as a sounding board, a helper, an adviser, and, last but not least, a friend.

   IN AUGUST 1999, MICHAEL STARTED WORK ON HIS NEW album, which would become Invincible, in New York City. He rented a town house on the Upper East Side, on Seventy-fourth Street. As Michael had done with his Hideaway in Culver City, we transformed that Upper East Side town house into a mini- Neverland. Michael wanted to create an environment where he felt comfortable, and he felt most comfortable when he was being a kid. So up on the fifth floor was a game room, with video games, a pool table, a movie projector, a popcorn machine, and a fully stocked candy counter. Michael asked for some mannequins, which I picked out at showrooms. They were delivered, assembled, and dressed in sportswear. We posed them around the first floor. To keep them company, there was a life-size Batman from Sharper Image standing in the middle of the room.

   The mannequins were odd company, especially on first sight, but Michael talked to them and joked with them as if they could understand him, the same way people talk to their dogs. I teased him, saying, “She has something to tell you. She wants me to tell you that your breath stinks and you should take a shower.” The mannequin concept may sound unusual. It’s not like everyone has mannequins in their living rooms. But I have to say that once they were set up, the effect was artsy and kind of cool.

   This town house wasn’t just about toys, though. Another whole floor was full of elegant art and china. Michael liked the paintings of William Bouguereau, a nineteenth-century French realist, so he had an art dealer go out and bid on some canvases that Sylvester Stallone had put up for auction. He purchased two—one for $6 million, and one for $13 million. The first depicted an angel and a fairy with a baby between them. The second showed a beautiful woman surrounded by angels. The canvas must have been ten feet tall.

   The kids and their nanny, Grace, came everywhere with us. (Pia, the second nanny, had worked for only the first year or so. When Grace needed a break, Michael generally turned to the Neverland staff.) If he was traveling, his children were with him, and his time was split between business meetings and taking the kids on excursions. At night, depending on Michael’s schedule, they slept in his room or with the nanny if he had to wake up too early. When it came to his children, Michael was much stricter than one would expect, given his own extravagances. There was Neverland. There were the games and toys that he loved. There was the omnipresent candy counter no matter where he was lodging. There was a “train room” back at Neverland with two sets of electronic trains. (Prince loved those trains.) Nonetheless, Michael wanted to make sure that his children weren’t spoiled. At Neverland, their use of the amusement park was limited to special excursions two or three times a week, and they knew they had to behave themselves if they wanted to go on the rides. Whether at home or traveling, they weren’t allowed to watch TV. Michael spent time reading books with them. He loved books with Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Snow White, but he also bought them children’s encyclopedias. He wanted his children to be well educated. Michael saw a learning opportunity for his children in every situation. If something broke, he explained how it worked. If it was raining, he talked about the water cycle. He loved to give them little lectures.

   There were plenty of toys, of course, but Prince and Paris were expected to treat them with respect. The luxuries were there for the taking, but the children had to behave themselves to earn them. They were taught to be appreciative and thankful.

   Michael wanted them to understand the value of working hard. “If it wasn’t for my father,” he often said, “I wouldn’t be here. He used to wake us up at five in the morning to rehearse. First thing when we got home from school, we’d rehearse more. He pushed my family to be the best they could be.”

   He didn’t want his children to follow his fast and complicated footsteps in entertainment, but he often gave Prince daily assignments, like suggesting that he walk around with a video camera, observing his world. When Michael returned home at the end of the day, he’d say, “Did you work today, Prince? Did you make me a movie?” As much as Michael indulged his own desire to play, he was thoughtful and aware of developing every aspect of his children’s experience.

   As much as Michael wanted to be there for his kids, there were simply times when it wasn’t possible. Grace, Prince and Paris’s live-in nanny, did a wonderful job of caring for them. When Prince was born, she was working as an assistant for the Jackson family organization, and it was Katherine, Michael’s mother, who’d suggested her as a nanny.

   “She’d be great with the baby—she’s such a wonderful person.”

   It was true. Grace was (and is) trustworthy, sweet, and loving. Those were the qualities Michael was looking for. Grace stepped into the role effortlessly. She raised the children, loved them like a mother, and would do anything for them. Most of the time Michael and Grace were very close. Nothing was more important to him than his children, and they were in her hands.

   But it was hard for Michael—as it is for many parents—to see how maternal the nanny was with his children. He didn’t want them to grow up thinking of Grace as their mother.

   “She works for you,” he would sometimes tell them when Grace wasn’t around. They were too young to understand, and he didn’t expect them to, but that was his way of venting his discomfort with the situation. Whenever he subconsciously felt that the relationship was getting too close, he seemed to put distance between the children and Grace. The unpredictable paranoia that increasingly overshadowed many of his interpersonal relationships came into play, and not even Grace was immune.

   At a certain point, when we were living on Seventy-fourth Street, Michael finally decided he didn’t want a nanny watching his children. Obviously, he was too busy to take care of his children fulltime. Among other things, he had to finish Invincible. Without the sales revenue he expected from the album, he stood to lose control of his music catalog to Sony. But he longed to be with his kids. Wasn’t that the most important thing in the world? He was torn, but in the end, his desire to feel like the sole parent won out. And so, Michael decided to try doing it all: caring for the kids while working on the album. He sent Grace away, and it was just us and the kids in the town house.

   In addition to my other responsibilities, I was now helping Michael take care of the kids, day and night. It may seem like a radical shift—and it was—but I was never a prima donna. I mean, I never aspired to be a nanny, but if Michael needed me to help him, how could I say no? A few months earlier, when he’d had to go out of town, I had taken care of Prince for two nights at Neverland. I read him books—at bedtime he wanted me to read Goodnight Moon. Every time I finished it he kept saying, “One more time.” Finally, I said, “It’s time to say ‘good night, Prince.’” As the oldest of five, I’d been around kids my whole life and knew my way around a diaper. The familial bond I felt for Michael naturally extended to Prince and Paris as well. I was used to being a big brother, and from the moment Prince and Paris were born, I thought of them as younger siblings.

   This time, in New York, I was mainly responsible for Paris, who was two, and Michael took Prince, who was three. During the day, if Michael wasn’t in the studio, we’d take them on excursions to a toy store or a bookstore. Michael and I wore dark glasses and hats, and the kids always wore something over their faces—seethrough scarves or masks. By the time we were living in New York, the kids were used to their head covers: they had always been a part of their lives.

   “Can we take the masks off when we get in the car?” they would ask, the same way other kids might beg to take off their winter boots.

   “Yes, you can take them off in the car,” Michael would say. What seemed eccentric to the outside world was ordinary and harmless in their household, and it was normal to me, too. Michael had his reasons, and inconvenient as they may have been at times, neither the kids nor I was going to question them.

   There was some Three Men and a Baby comedy to it—the two of us, ignoring the ever-ringing phones, changing diapers, tossing ointments back and forth, throwing diapers at each other to make Prince laugh. Sometimes when I was changing one of the kids, I’d take the dirty diaper and put it in Michael’s face. “Smell this,” I’d taunt. “This is what your children do.” He’d run away, shielding his face, and I’d follow, diaper extended toward him.

   When Michael was at the studio, I was often on the phone, exhausted after a night of baby tending, trying to change Paris’s diaper while conducting a business call. It wasn’t easy, but it was fun.

   At dinnertime, we’d all gather around the kitchen table with Paris in her high chair. We’d cut up the kids’ food, feed them, bathe them, comb their hair, change their diapers, and get them into their pajamas. Before bed, Michael would sit on the floor doing puzzles with Prince while Paris climbed all over him.

   Prince slept in Michael’s bed and Paris slept in a crib next to mine. Paris, like her brother before her, liked to sleep in my arms. I mean, all babies sleep eventually, but I’d hold Paris, walking and singing to her, and she always fell asleep. As soon as I put her down, she’d start crying again. Believe me, Paris was not an easy baby, especially not at night. She was tough. Sweet, of course, but when she woke up in the middle of the night for a diaper change, she did not necessarily see any reason to go back to sleep. There were times when I didn’t get much sleep. Luckily, I was used to that.

   The kids were adorable, Paris following Prince around like a little shadow, and they were happy with us. I treasure the memory. That said, it was time for Grace to come back. Yeah, we lasted about a month. Two days after I called her, Grace returned, and I, for one, was relieved.

   The night Grace returned, Michael and I went alone to a kosher Chinese restaurant to decompress.

   “Those kids can be a handful, huh?” Michael said. I nodded and ordered us some wine. We had just ordered our food when Michael suddenly grabbed my arm.

   “We gotta go,” he said urgently.

   “What?” I said. “We just got here!”

   “Look to your left,” he whispered. I glanced over, expecting to see an unhinged fan or a window full of paparazzi. Instead, there on the wall near my head was a cockroach.

   “Check!” I said. I muttered an excuse and paid the waitress. As we left we saw her grab the cockroach with her bare hand. “Did you see that?” Michael said when we were back out on the street. “Did you see her grab it with her hand? That can’t possibly be kosher.”

   Though he was technically married to Debbie, Michael saw himself as father and mother to the kids. This dual role of his solidified in October 1999, when, after three years of marriage, Debbie Rowe filed for divorce. Being married to Michael had taken a toll on her private life. She couldn’t even ride her horses without being assaulted by the paparazzi. She hoped getting a divorce would pull the spotlight from her, and it did. Otherwise, the divorce didn’t change anything. Though she and Michael were still on friendly terms, Debbie rarely came to Neverland. The kids were not in the habit of seeing her, so there was no disruption to their lives. All in all, there was nothing shocking about her decision: it simply felt like the inevitable conclusion to an arrangement that, according to Michael, had been based on his business with Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal from the beginning. Since Michael wasn’t bothered by it, neither was I.

  

   AS THE FALL OF 1999 WOUND DOWN, IT WAS INCREASINGLY clear to me that my whole life revolved around Michael. It may seem like a tough position—being in the shadow of such a megastar and perpetually on call—but I never thought of it that way. I could never be Michael, nor did I want to be. I didn’t want the spotlight. I wasn’t and will never be a spotlight guy. I felt the same sense of direction he’d always inspired in me. Every day I knew what I had to do, and I believed in what I was doing. I learned from him and absorbed how he saw the world, taking in his kind, respectful, and thoughtful demeanor.

   I also became attuned to Michael’s more difficult traits. He could be paranoid and overly sensitive, prone to extreme emotions and jumping to conclusions. To counter that, I was careful to listen. To observe everything. To think before I spoke. He didn’t like to be told what to do, so if I had an opinion, I drew him toward it, so he might think (or pretend) that he had come up with it on his own. The better I understood him, the stronger and more stable the dynamic between us became.

   I had been interested in the entertainment business for a long time. Now I was living it, and all the complexities that came with it. Though Michael was starting to work on Invincible, his business and creative ambitions stretched far beyond music. He was always evaluating new opportunities—casinos, real estate, start-ups, filmmaking, and humanitarian work. On top of those projects, which were usually in various states from inception to execution, there was the ongoing business of running Neverland and managing his music business and partnership with Sony. And then, of course, there was scheduling travel for his appearances, honors, and commitments. It sounds like a lot, and it was. Michael had a whole team of advisers and support staff to handle these ventures and responsibilities. When I was a kid, the people I’d met in Michael’s organization were mostly the ones who helped him on a daily basis: security, drivers, makeup and wardrobe people, and so on. How the business of Michael Jackson was run was pretty much invisible to me. Now I started to see how complex the management was. Though I didn’t have formal business training, I came face-to-face with the infrastructure of Michael’s organization.

   There were lawyers, managers, accountants, and publicists. And it wasn’t just one lawyer or one manager. It was a team of lawyers and a team of managers. They were all involved in every deal, and at times they had different agendas. For example, if Michael wanted to invest in a company, the managers wanted to make sure the deal wouldn’t take away from his music commitments, the PR people wanted it to serve his public image, and the lawyers wanted to make sure the deal didn’t conflict with his other legal obligations.

   And yet, for all these other interests, Michael did want to focus his energy on his next album, so he asked me to represent him when his musical obligations got in the way.

   “These people work for you,” he told me.

   Technically, when I spoke for Michael, I was their boss, but being extremely aware of my new-kid-on-the-block status, I tried to be as polite and cautious as possible.

   All the politeness in the world wouldn’t have gotten me through the first few months, though, if it hadn’t been for Karen Smith. Working out of an office in L.A., Karen was Michael’s executive assistant, but she was much more than that. Karen had worked for Michael ever since I could remember. She knew everything that was going on in Michael’s life and kept it all organized. If I didn’t know who to call, I’d call Karen.

   Michael had no regard for time or other people’s schedules. He would call anyone—me, my parents, Karen—at any hour of the night. Nor did he have a sense of priority. He might call Karen at three in the morning and say, “Karen, can you believe one of the flamingos died? An animal came in and killed it. Can you call and say I want another flamingo? And make sure no animals can get to their island.” Day or night, Karen always had pen and paper at the ready and handled his requests without complaint. She could coordinate anything. Karen’s superwoman mystique was compounded by the fact that nobody ever saw her in person. She was always only a voice on the phone.

   That voice was at once sympathetic and professional.

   Sometimes, at the end of a hard day, if I needed to vent, I would call Karen. It wasn’t like I could call my best friend to complain about my boss or ask for advice. Every element of my job was confidential. But Karen was the most loyal person in Michael’s organization. She had seen and been through everything before. She was the only person in the world whom I could truly confide in when it came to work.

   From Karen and from acting on my own instincts, I learned that the best way to help Michael make decisions was to gather all the facts about a given situation and present them to him. From there, Michael made decisions, and I executed them. Presenting him with all the facts seemed like an obvious approach, but as time passed, I realized not everyone had his best interests in mind. Michael wasn’t always given the complete picture. This was a problem of his own making: he only wanted to hear what he wanted to hear. His accountants and lawyers seemed dedicated. But some of his business associates, eager to profit, talked up the benefits and played down the risks.

   I wasn’t experienced, but at least I had an objective perspective. I had no hidden agenda, and my sole intention was to help Michael. As I gained confidence, I became more than Michael’s surrogate voice, simply relaying his wishes; for better or worse, I started to weigh in with my own opinions.

   During my childhood and adolescence, Michael had bred in me the notion that I could not trust anyone. At first I dismissed this as paranoia, but by the end of 1999, I came to see his lack of trust as an essential survival mechanism. The more time I spent with him, the more I saw that in his world, skepticism was a necessary defense. The problems went far beyond the negligence I’d seen in his Neverland staff. He lived in a world where everyone wanted something from him. They reacted to his fame and success with envy and greed. This was true even among his closest associates. It was a viper’s nest.

   My transformation was sort of like that of Michael Corleone in The Godfather. Before Michael is involved in the family business, he is nice and naive. A pushover. But when his father gets shot, he does what has to be done. He transforms overnight into a killer. I had been Frank the friend, Frank the confidant, Frank the assistant. Now Michael wanted everything run past me, and I stepped into place as gatekeeper, fiercely determined to use my powers for good. I knew there were risks involved: Michael had warned me that people wouldn’t like taking orders from me, and I suspected that if I got in the way of someone’s agenda, they might react aggressively, but I didn’t care.

   There were times when Michael didn’t want to see or hear all of what I had to tell him about the corruption I suspected in members of his organization. He would say, “Frank, you just started here. You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a different world,” but I always told it like I saw it. That was my job—to provide an impartial perspective that Michael could take or leave as he saw fit.

   Challenging as the days sometimes were, I never stopped feeling and expressing gratitude to Michael. There was not a day that passed when I didn’t say, “Thank you for everything. I love you.” I said that every single evening, and we’d give each other a hug. I acknowledged and appreciated him. But life in the coming year would get more complicated, and as it did, Michael’s behavior would pull my loyalty in two directions, and the sanctity of our lifelong relationship would be threatened for the first, but not the last, time.