If he acts like a real dad when everyone’s watching.”

No ten-year-old should sound that old.

That was my first thought, and it has never entirely left me since.

My son had learned, somewhere in the last two years, to watch adults the way you watch weather you don’t trust — carefully, from a little distance, looking for the change before it arrives.

He had learned it because his father had taught it to him, one broken promise at a time, and I had not been able to stop the lesson from landing.

I wanted to say no.