They did not know, and would never remember, that the man whose name they carried on the insurance paperwork had signed them away in a hallway.

I decided, holding them, that this was the last power Flynn Locke would ever have over any of us: the power to be, someday, a story I chose how and when to tell.

I made a set of promises to those two sleeping children that afternoon, none of which they will ever hear me say.

I promised them that the manner of their arrival would never become a wound they had to carry — that I would not raise them as the survivors of something, would not let the word abandonment hang over their childhood like weather.

I promised that whatever bitterness I was owed, I would spend somewhere they could not see it, and that in the house we built together the dominant fact would be safety, not grievance.