I am going to reconstruct my justifications, and those are not the same thing, and my daughter deserves the first one.

The telephone calls. Fifteen minutes, on a schedule.

Leo takes them.

Nora takes about half of them and wanders off during the rest, which is what a seven-year-old does on any telephone.

And the thing I stopped doing.

For eighteen years I covered for that man with his own children and I did not know I was doing it.

He missed Leo’s first day of first grade because of a meeting and I said he had been stuck at the airport.

He forgot Nora’s third birthday until the evening and I said he had been planning a surprise.