Loving Your Child Is an Instinct; Shielding Him From the Consequences of What He Did to Another Human Being Is Something Else Entirely — I Learned the Difference at Sixty, at the Door of a Chicken Coop

I looked into my son’s eyes for the boy I raised, and I did not find him.

“Precisely because she is your wife,” I said, “you were the one who was supposed to protect her.” And I put my arm around Natasha’s shoulders and I walked her to my car, and Brock ran alongside pounding the window and shouting that I was going to destroy this family, and I drove out through that gate and did not look back at him once.

Chapter 3 — The Diner

Twenty minutes later, in a quiet diner in town, Natasha ate a bowl of chicken noodle soup as though she had forgotten food could be warm.