Why would they.

To them I was a stranger, or worse, a name attached to an absence, the uncle who used to come around and then didn’t.

I crouched down to their height, slow, the way you approach an animal that has learned to distrust hands, and I said, “Hi.

I’m your uncle Cal.

I was your dad’s little brother.

I’m really, really glad you’re here.” Ollie looked at me for a long moment with those grave eyes, and then he asked me the first question he ever asked me, in a careful, flat, grown-up voice that broke my heart clean in half.

“Is there food here?” And I said yes.