Evelyn was asked, on the record, whether she consented, and she said yes.

I was asked whether I acknowledged paternity and understood the obligations that came with it, which include support until the age of twenty-one in New York, and I said yes.

And then Judge Marion Deckard, who has been on that bench for eighteen years and who handles about nine hundred of these a year, signed an order of filiation, which is one page.

It took about ninety seconds.