I looked at my children.

Wes was watching me with the careful eyes of a nine-year-old who understands more than you want him to, and I reached over and put my hand on his knee and said, “You did good back there.

All of you.” Romy, who had started the whole thing without knowing it, asked from the back, “Was that our dad?” And I told her the truth, because I had promised myself a decade ago that whatever else my children got from me, they would get the truth: “Yes.

That was your father.” “He was sad,” she said.