And here, at the center of it all, was a seven-year-old boy meeting his father for the first time, and the only thing he wanted to know — the single question that mattered to him out of all the questions a child in his situation might ask — was whether this man liked dinosaurs.

Not where he had been.

Not why he had left.

Not what he was worth or what he had done.

Just: are you someone I can share the thing I love with?

Because that is what a father is, to a seven-year-old — not an heir to an empire, not a fugitive from a crime, not a figure of tragedy, but simply a person who might, possibly, like dinosaurs too, and want to talk about them, and be there on the ordinary afternoons when a boy wants to show someone a picture of a tyrannosaurus.

Noah cut through six years of adult catastrophe to the only thing that was ever really at stake for him, and it was so small, and so pure, and so completely right, that it broke everyone who heard it.