“You look happy.”

“I was happy.”

He set it on my mantle beside the old hospital photograph.

For a moment the two pictures faced one another across the years: the infant whose face I could not see, and the grown man who had chosen to return.

“There’s something I want to ask,” Tobias said.

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve been calling you Evelyn because I didn’t want to rush either of us.

But would it be strange if I called you Mom sometimes?”