“That was the moment,” Fabian said, “that I understood exactly where I stood.

I wasn’t a son he’d lost.

I was a problem he’d paid to file away, and I’d shown up on his desk still unfiled.”

Matthias didn’t speak for a long time.

When he did, it was not to Fabian and not to me, but almost to himself, to the man in the yellowed photograph.

“He used to tell me the name was everything,” he said.