My ex-husband invited the former wife he believed was still childless and miserable to his family’s Christmas at their military estate. He never imagined I would arrive on a government tactical helicopter — with four eight-year-olds who had his face.

come up with it.

That is my sentence.

I have said it — that exact construction, those words, in that order — about four hundred times in eight years.

On telephones, with the door open. To my sister, about forty times. To Pell.

To a woman at a conference in Austin in 2022 who I had known for about four hours.

And at a table with four people at it, in my own house, when those children were six years old and in the next room with the television on and the door open.

He told everyone they didn’t exist.

It is a good line.

It is accurate. It is economical. It is eight words and it lands every single time and I know it lands, because I have watched four hundred faces do the same thing when I say it.

And a child who hears his mother say a thing four