An hour later, the four of us were sitting in a quiet airport cafe over sandwiches and juice boxes and a cup of coffee that I let go cold, because I could not stop looking at my sons long enough to drink it.

Rosalind answered my questions carefully, guarding still, letting me back into their lives one cautious fact at a time, and I did not push, because she had earned the right to set the pace of this and I had earned nothing yet.

I learned that Mason was obsessed with geography, that he knew nearly every state capital and would tell you all of them if you let him.

I learned that Lucas took things apart — plastic toys, mostly, to see how they worked, though he could not always get them back together, and left a trail of disassembled objects behind him wherever he went.

I learned that Rosalind had worked as an administrative assistant at a medical clinic, and that she had raised the boys through the hardest early years with the help of her sister, Charlotte.

And I learned how we had come to be in that terminal at the same moment.