I accepted the smooth surface he presented, the way you accept a smooth surface when examining it might cost you something, and while I was accepting it, my grandsons were sleeping under one thin blanket in a parking lot.

I will not pretend that the villains of this story are only Selina and her family.

There is a smaller, quieter failure in it that belongs to me — the failure of a father who did not notice his own son drowning, because his son had been raised, partly by me, to hide it well.

That is why, when I finally did find him, I did not lecture, and I did not ask how he could have let it get this bad.

I had no standing to ask that.

I had let it get this bad, too, by not looking.