We were both fluent in loneliness.

That was the true bond, underneath the chess and the tea, and it was real even though it was not the whole story; the fact that he was secretly my father did not make our loneliness less genuine, or our friendship less real.

In some ways it made it more so.

Because here were two people, a father and a daughter separated by forty-five years and a terrible sin, who did not know they were father and daughter, and who were drawn together anyway, across all of it, by the simple animal recognition of a kindred solitude.

The blood was there, unknown, pulling quietly beneath the surface.