But she came to me, Maya, when she had no one else she felt she could tell, and she told me everything.

I was the only person in the world who knew the whole truth.

And I have carried it for ten years.”

She said it like a confession, which I would soon understand was exactly what it was.

There was a woman standing in front of me who had known, for a decade, the answer to the one question that had shadowed my grandson’s entire childhood, the one question I had told him a hundred times I could not answer.

She had known who Noah’s father was since before Noah was born.