“I was wanted there too.”

And for the first time, the two truths could stand side by side without hurting one another.

I had lost thirty-one years.

I could never pretend otherwise.

But I had found my son, and the years ahead were ours to fill—not with the childhood we could not recover, but with dinners, letters, holidays, arguments about books, and the simple extraordinary privilege of knowing one another.

When Tobias stood to rejoin the others, he offered me his arm. I took it.

We walked together toward the sound of our family laughing.