It hit Alex harder than any lawsuit, any confrontation, any court document ever could.

“I know,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” Leo replied, his small face deadly serious.

“If she talked bad about you, it would be easier to hate you.” Alex swallowed hard, and knelt down to the boy’s eye level.

“You have every right to be mad at me, Leo,” he said.

“Are you gonna leave again?” the boy asked.

And Alex, who in his old life had made promises the way other men made small talk, did not make one now.

“I’m going to spend every day trying to show up,” he said.