I was wrong, and I now believe dangerously so.

What I finally understood, watching my son heal in a small bright house far from all of it, is that half a father is not better than none.

Half a father is a wound that reopens every single day — the daily lesson, taught over and over to a small child, that he is not quite worth staying for.

Leo did not need his father’s half-love, his forgotten concerts and his peeled-off hands and his whispered I got her out first. No child needs that.

It does not build them; it hollows them.

A child does not need an expensive suit chosen by a receptionist.