That is what I cried for, alone, behind a locked door: not the fact of my sons, which was a joy, but the size of what had been taken before I ever knew to miss it.

When I met with Rosalind the next day, I did not offer her a hollow apology for a thing I had not known about; that would have been asking her to comfort me for my own innocence.

Instead I apologized for the thing that was actually mine to apologize for.

“I should have looked harder,” I said.

“Six years ago.

When you vanished, I accepted my mother’s story because it was easier than the alternative, and because believing you had left let me feel wronged instead of foolish.