For months she’d told him Claire was exaggerating, that the kids were fine, that he shouldn’t feel guilty.

And then the moment it looked like it might cost her something, she had chosen herself, and left with another partner at the firm.

Jason said it without self-pity, which was almost worse, because it meant he finally saw it clearly.

“I’m not telling you that so you’ll feel sorry for me,” he said. “When she left, it made me actually look at what I’d done. But that’s not the only thing.”

A month before, he’d come to see Zoe, and promised her he’d be home soon — and his seven-year-old had just said okay in a small flat voice, a voice with no belief left in it, and it had followed him out to his car.

And then he had done a thing he was ashamed of.