On Father’s Day my millionaire son walked into my freezing apartment, saw the tinned soup on the table, and asked how I was managing on the eight thousand a month his wife sends me. I told him nobody sends me anything.

She looked at Emmett. Then at me. And for about half a second something went across that woman’s face before she folded it away, which she is very good at and which she should not have had to be.

And she said: oh, Emmett. I didn’t want you finding out like this.

Which is a sentence that sounds like a confession and was not one, and which cost that woman about four days of her marriage.

And my son put the phone down on the table, face down, and said four words:

Finding out what, Thea?

And she looked at me. Straight at me, across about eleven feet of that room, for a good four seconds.

And she did not say it. That is the thing I keep coming back to. She had it in her mouth and she looked at me and she waited to see whether I would.