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Daniel stood too fast and bumped the chair behind him. The paper trembled in his hand.

Know.

Did he?

He knew enough to feel his own life splitting open.

He knew enough to see his own jaw in Michael’s face and his own father’s crescent on the boy’s neck.

He knew enough to hear Emily Harper’s name and feel nineteen different versions of regret clawing up from the pit where he had stored them.

But there was still one part missing. The part that mattered most.

He looked at Michael. Then at Michelle, who had gone uncharacteristically still.

“Do you know who your father is?” Daniel asked.

Michelle’s chin lifted.

“Grandma said some truths take time.”

The sentence was so perfectly Margaret that Daniel had to turn away.

He stepped out the back door and into the yard, the paper still in his fist.

The afternoon sun hit him hard. Somewhere a lawn mower droned. A dog barked twice and gave up. Daniel walked three paces, then stopped with both hands on his hips because his body needed structure even if his mind had none.

Michael Daniel Harper.

Nine years old.

Born four months after Daniel left.

Emily Harper.

He heard the screen door creak behind him and thought, for one vicious second, that it would be Margaret.

It was Michael.

The boy came only halfway down the steps and stopped.

“You look sick,” he said.

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