It was not pride, though I had no right to pride and felt a ghost of it anyway, immediately followed by shame at the feeling.

It was not even grief, exactly.

It was something closer to what a man might feel standing before a house he built and then sold, watching another family laugh on the porch he laid — the specific agony of looking at something that came from you, that carries your mark in every line, and that belongs entirely and rightfully to someone else.

I had made those boys.