The choice is yours.” His plain honesty disarmed me completely.

“And what about Theodore?” I asked softly.

“Theodore,” he said, “is a separate matter altogether.” He opened a drawer and drew out a folder, and in it were the reports that confirmed what we had come to hope and fear: the extended testing established, with near certainty, that Brandon, Theodore’s father, was Raymond’s own lost son.

The old orphanage records, the intake dates, his mother’s maiden name, all of it aligned.

“I missed twenty-nine years of his life,” Raymond whispered.