The judge read Rowan’s folded paper, the one he had kept hidden in a notebook with his father’s address on it, and I watched a woman on the bench take a moment before she spoke.

Ambrose has primary custody now. Delphine has supervised visits, which she attends about half the time, and I have stopped speculating about why. Garrick left in the autumn.

My father called me in February and said one sentence, which was that he had read the support records. Then nothing else for a long minute. We are talking again, slowly, and it is the first honest thing between us in a decade.

I have the kids two weekends a month. Poppy is eight and Mr. Buttons has been through the wash more times than any giraffe should survive. Rowan is fourteen and does not talk about that morning, and I do not make him.

I spent years assuming my time was the only thing my family took without asking. It turned out the same habit of not looking too closely had cost five children their father. Being available to everyone is not the same as being valued by anyone, and the day I finally asked one question out loud, everything that had been hidden simply stopped being able to hide.