Lucas’s small brows knit together, working on something.

“So,” he said slowly, “you weren’t mad at us?”

That question — the idea that these two small boys had spent any part of their five years wondering whether their father was angry at them, whether they had done something to make him stay away — shattered something deep in my chest that I do not think has ever fully gone back together.

“I could never be mad at you, buddy,” I said, and my voice broke on it.

“Never.

I didn’t even know you were here.