And there was a drafted legal settlement, professionally prepared, offering Rosalind two hundred thousand dollars in exchange for her absolute non-disclosure and the surrender of every letter, email, and document in her possession — the surrender, in other words, of the evidence I was holding in my hands.

I felt violently, physically sick as I turned over the photographs of my children.

“You hired a private investigator,” I said slowly, “to stalk my children.”

“To investigate children,” my mother corrected me, without a flicker of shame, “whose legal status is entirely unverified.”

I looked at her then — looked at the woman who had raised me, and I understood that I had never known her at all.

I had known a role she played for me.