And then Nathan came into it, and he did the one thing I had stopped believing any man would do: he was not frightened of my family.

He seemed, if anything, to want it.

He got down on the floor and played with the girls.

He sat at the table and helped Ben with his math.

He cooked dinner in my kitchen and showed up at the school concerts and the parent nights, and more than once, quietly, with what I took for feeling, he told me he hoped that one day the kids might call him Dad. I believed him.

God help me, I believed every word.