We could file a confidential civil suit.

We could pursue this quietly, through the family courts, out of the public eye.

It would be easier on you, and easier on the boy.

You don’t have to make it a spectacle.” And every time he offered me the quiet path, I gave him the same answer, and my voice did not shake when I said it.

“No,” I told him.

“He spent ten years hiding in the shadows while my daughter lay in a cold grave and my grandson grew up without a name for his own father.