“Mom!” he pleaded.

“Tell them she’s overreacting!

I made a mistake, all right, I made a mistake, but we can fix this!

Marriages have problems, people work through things—” But Evelyn stood up slowly from her chair, and there were tears in her eyes, tears of anger and disappointment and shame, and she looked at her son the way you look at a stranger who has done something unforgivable.

“You used your daughter’s birth,” she said, her voice shaking, “as a cover to cheat on your wife.