And then he added the detail that turned my blood to ice water.

“She kept a picture on her desk,” he said, “of a yellow plane spraying a green field.

She told me my dad flew that exact plane.” A yellow plane.

Spraying a green field.

My plane.

Someone had shown my son a photograph of my crop-duster, and told him it was his father’s, and kept him anyway.

Chapter 9 — The Number

Two days after that conversation, I paid for a private, certified paternity test with a strict chain of custody.