He opened his messaging app, and he removed me from the family group chat.

It was the twenty-eighth time he had done it.

“You know Tristan loves chicken,” he said, leaning back in his chair with the air of a man delivering an obvious truth to a slow student.

“And since he isn’t your biological son, you ought to be even more careful not to make him feel left out.”

I looked at him and could not find, anywhere in his face, the man I had married.

“And Chloe?”