They could choose whether to know her at all.

Constance had been writing to me for months.

Her letters were careful, articulate, and full of phrases like unfortunate circumstances and decisions made under pressure.

The first one that sounded remotely different arrived shortly after the family-tree assignment.

“I withheld information that belonged to you and Lauren,” she wrote.

“I frightened a young woman who needed help.

My decisions cost four children a relationship with their father.

I cannot ask that consequence to disappear.” I read the paragraph twice.