The paralyzing shock, the spinning, weeping panic of a moment before, drained away, and in its place came a clarity so cold and so complete that it frightened even me.

Because Flynn had made one mistake, one enormous and irreversible mistake, and I was possibly the only person on earth positioned to understand how large it was.

He had forgotten who my grandfather was.

But before the clarity came, there was one long moment I have never told anyone about, and it belongs in this account because it was the truest instant of the whole ordeal.

When the administrator turned that tablet toward me and I saw my married name struck through and my maiden name in its place — when I understood that a man in a suit had, while I slept, unmade the central fact of five years of my life with a signature I never saw — I did not feel rage first.