The first was that Mike genuinely had no idea — that his blank, stupid incomprehension was real, that he was doing the arithmetic for the very first time and it had not yet resolved.

He had not known Lily existed.

Whatever he was, he had not spent seven years knowingly ignoring his own child; he had spent them in ignorance, which is a lesser crime than I had sometimes imagined, and I filed that away.

But the second thing was far larger, and it was written in the collapsing face of the woman beside him.

Tiffany’s dread was not the dread of a stranger startled by a child.