And slowly I understood that the approval I had chased my whole life was never coming, could never come, because it had never been real; it was a lure, not a gift.

What was real was the woman sleeping down the hall in my son’s room, who had asked me for nothing my whole marriage but honesty, and to whom I had given everything except that.

I could not undo the seven years.

But I could become, at last, a man who did not need his mother’s permission to love his own family — and that, it turned out, was the only thing that could make me worth forgiving.

Chapter 36 — In Her Name

A month later I took Amina to see a bright apartment near Dev’s school, and showed her the budget and the paperwork.