Diane lived in a small house on a quiet street with a green front door and a plastic tricycle parked beside the porch steps.

I sat in my car for a moment before going in.

My back ached.

My ankles were swollen.

I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant and driving across the city to meet the son my husband had never acknowledged, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I got out of the car.

Diane answered the door before I could knock.

She was smaller than I expected — slight, with dark circles under her eyes that spoke of the surgery and the weeks since.

But she held herself straight, and her handshake was firm.

“Come in,” she said.

“He’s in the living room.

I told him a friend of his daddy’s was coming to visit.”

The living room was warm and a little cluttered in the way that children’s spaces always are — a basket of toy cars, a stack of picture books, a drawing taped to the wall that appeared to be either a dog or a very enthusiastic cloud.

Daniel was sitting on the rug with a set of wooden blocks, building something with great concentration.

He looked up when I walked in.

Mark’s eyes.

Mark’s exact eyes — the particular shade of grey-green, the slight downward tilt at the outer corners.

It hit me somewhere behind the sternum.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

“I’m Sarah.”

“I’m Daniel.” He held up the structure he’d been building.

“This is a rocket.”

“It’s a very good rocket.”

He considered this seriously.

“It needs more on top,” he said, and went back to work.

Diane caught my eye from the doorway.

She had seen my face when I first looked at him.

She gave me a small, careful nod.

We sat in the kitchen while Daniel built his rocket and periodically reported on its progress through the doorway.

Diane made coffee.

I had decaf.

We talked for nearly two hours.