And yet it was also that brokenness, that estrangement, that had put me on the road nine years ago, into the solitary life that left me single and unattached and able, on a moment’s notice, to become a father.

The wound and the healing came from the same source.

I do not know what to do with that except to hold it, the way I was holding Maya, and to be grateful past all reason that the story did not end where it so easily could have, with a twenty-first family, and a twenty-first no, and a little girl growing up never knowing she had two uncles who would have crossed the earth for her if only they had known.

Chapter 12 — The Timeline