He saw his father on his own terms; some visits went well and some ended in silent drives home, and I let them be whatever they were.

Eleanor tried, in time, to reach back — first with expensive gifts, which Tommy ignored, then with letters.

He didn’t open one until he was thirteen, and when he did it said, in her careful hand, I confused volume with strength, and health with worth, and a family name with love.

You were never less.

I was only too blind to see you. He asked me if I thought she meant it, and I told him the truest thing I knew: that people can genuinely change, and that someone changing still does not entitle them to a key to your life.

He met her, eventually, at a park, when he was fourteen, and told her plainly never to call anyone the “better” child again, and she promised, and they talked for twenty minutes, and he decided that saying his piece was enough and he didn’t need more than that.