Your dad” — he stopped, and his jaw worked — “your dad used to drive us to hockey, and he was kind to me, and I used to think, God, I wish I had a father like Mr.

Selwyn.

I said that to my mother once.

I watched her face do something I didn’t understand until years later.” When his mother finally told him the truth at seventeen — told him because she was ill and afraid of dying with it unsaid — Fabian had driven straight to Bertram’s office, shaking, and Bertram had looked at him across the desk, and looked at the crescent mark when Fabian pulled up his shirt to show him, and gone the color of ash.

He had not shouted or denied it.

He had, Fabian said, simply looked very old and very tired, and asked one question: Does Matthias know? Not are you all right. Not I’m sorry. Only: does my real son know.