I read patterns for a living.

And I missed this one entirely, because it had been assembled by someone who understood that the surest way to hide a pattern is to make every piece of it look like affection.

And Kai had never once been at ease around him.

When my son flinched from Dario’s hand on his shoulder, when he asked in a small voice whether we could go home early, I had told him — gently, patiently, wrongly — that he just needed to give his stepfather a chance.

There is a particular shame in remembering how I handled those moments.