“Were you told that I wanted nothing to do with them?” I asked.

“Your lawyer said you wanted to comply with support arrangements but preferred not to be involved personally.”

I shut my eyes.

That sounded precisely like what I had said.

“For years,” Marianne continued, “I wondered whether there had been some misunderstanding.

But you never asked.

Eventually I stopped trying to persuade a man to want to know his own daughters.”

“I’m sorry.”