It was the simple, overdue correction of a mistake I had made in trusting her with that power in the first place.

Months later, she asked to see the boys, and I agreed to meet her — alone, at a quiet restaurant, to hear the request.

“They are my grandsons, Christopher,” she said, and for the first time in my life I heard something crack in her voice, some genuine grief showing through.

“They were your grandsons six years ago,” I said, “when you paid a woman sixty thousand dollars to make them disappear.”

“I made mistakes,” she said.

“No,” I told her, and I said it gently, because I was not trying to wound her; I was only, at last, telling her the truth.