I hadn’t.

But I’d known enough to ask questions and chosen the easier explanations instead.

My name is Evan Mercer.

I was thirty-eight, and I owned a small electrical contracting business in Boise.

My wife Claire had died when Hailey was two.

After the funeral, the two of us had learned to be a family again in uneven, painful steps: burned pancakes on Saturdays, picture books I read badly because I was crying, Christmas decorations that stayed up until February because neither of us wanted to put them away.

Brenda came into our lives through a mutual friend.