“I don’t think you should send that,” Zachary said.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Good.”

Later, when the twins had gone to bed, I watched the clip again alone.

In those years I had worked so hard to make the boys’ world feel ordinary that I sometimes forgot how often their missing father entered it through an unguarded sentence.

I remembered sitting in the parking lot after school plays, holding the steering wheel until I could stop crying before I drove them home.

I remembered smiling for photographs that never showed the person holding the camera.