When Evelyn called one last time to scream about the judgment against the funds she’d received, I did not get angry — I told her to use her own money, to find Dylan’s actual father, to stop treating another woman’s husband as her property, and I blocked her number for good.

I saw Marcus once more, by chance, at a bank downtown, grayer and stooped, and he came over and asked, with a terrible hope, whether Ethan ever spoke of him.

“Almost never,” I said, because it was true.

“So he doesn’t miss me,” he said, and his eyes filled.

I thought about it, and I answered him as honestly as I could.

“To miss someone, Marcus, you need good memories you want to go back to.