Callum learned it earlier and more completely, the way older children do; by nine he had stopped mentioning the trips at all, would simply go quiet the week the suitcase came out and busy himself with something in his room until the car was gone.

I used to think that was resilience.

I know now that it was the opposite.

It was a child folding a part of himself away because he had decided, at nine years old, that the part of him that hoped to be included was a liability.

Grayson did that.

Not with a raised hand, never with a raised voice — he was far too careful for that — but with a patient, smiling, year-after-year campaign that taught two small children their own longing was an embarrassment.

I had spent those years thinking the worst thing he was doing was to me.