Near the end of summer, Preston asked Naomi whether he could write the boys a letter for when they were older.

It would explain, in adult language, why he had not been present at their birth and how they had finally found each other.

“Only if you tell the truth,” she said.

“That’s the point.”

He spent several evenings drafting it.

The first version blamed Constance so heavily that Preston sounded almost innocent.

He tore it up.

The second dwelled on business pressure and his own unhappy childhood.