She told him on the eighth of January, on a Saturday morning, and I was at my house with my phone face up on the table for four hours.

Dr.

Fontanez’s advice, which Carmen relayed to me afterward and which I have since repeated to two other people, was that you do not do it as a revelation.

You do not sit a child down and say I have something to tell you. You put it into the ordinary flow of the day and you let the child set the speed, because a seven-year-old cannot process a scene but can process a fact.

So Carmen said, at the kitchen table, more or less: you know how I’ve told you your dad and I split up before you were born and I didn’t know where he was?

Well, I know where he is now.

He lives here in Austin.

He’s been wanting to meet you.

And actually you’ve met him — it’s Wes, from the coffee place.

And Beto said: “The truck guy?”