I didn't move.
Lucas was looking up at me from the sofa, Bear under one arm, temperature still sitting in his cheeks, eyes clear and completely serious. He wasn't frightened. He wasn't even particularly concerned. He was just asking. The way he asks everything, directly, without apology, because nobody had taught him yet that some questions are supposed to be softened before delivery.
"Is that man my dad?"
I had prepared for this question. Not this version of it, not this morning, not with the actual man sitting twenty feet away in my kitchen, but the question itself. I had been preparing for it since he was old enough to form sentences. I had seven different answers depending on his age and what he seemed ready for, and I had practiced them in the bathroom mirror at odd hours and I had
