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.

In the October.

Four weeks before that message arrived.

That is a fact I had completely forgotten until Pell said it to me in the fourth week afterwards, in a car park, without meaning anything by it — and it stopped me dead and I did not drive for about eleven minutes.

Isaiah straightened his little officer’s cap for about the fifth time.

“Mom. Are we really gonna meet Grandpa?”

Nia leaned forward over her belt. “What about Grandma? Is she gonna be there?”

And I looked at four hopeful faces at eight thousand feet and I said: “We’ll find out when we get there.”

I wanted to promise them something. All four of them were looking at me.

I have never once in eight years promised any of those children anything about a person I do not control, and I was not going to start at eight thousand feet.

But