“Young Mara was going to be on Broadway and that was that. I had been in theater club since freshman year of college. She joined my senior year, her junior year, because she heard we were going to be doing a Game of Thrones musical production, back before there was a show, before it was mainstream at all, and she had to be a part of it.

“Thrones was fairly new then; popular, but nonreaders didn’t know about it. We were waiting for book four to come out. The play was a comedic parody version of the first three books that I had written myself. All of us theater kids were obsessing over George’s world.”

Dad clears his throat. “I don’t know what you want me to say. It was a whirlwind. I had no plans to be in New York my entire life, but once rehearsals started, we were flirting every day and going out for food all the time and then we were together. All the time. She was beautiful. I was attracted to her passion. Her … will. She’s determined and she gets things done and she’s confident about it. I didn’t see the flaws that came alongside that.”

I ignore that bit. “The theater part sounds romantic. Who did you play in the play?”

“I was the lead.”

“Ned?” I ask. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

My father smiles wistfully. “Yep.”

“Who was Mom?”

“Cersei.”

I choke on air. “Oh god.”

“She was actually hilarious. Your mother used to have a great sense of humor. It slowly drained away as our marriage sucked the life out of us. It happened gradually, like erosion. We were really young; we didn’t know what we were getting into. The more unhappy I became living in New York, the less open she was to hearing anything I wanted to say.

“She started to feel like an anchor on the career I’d dreamed of achieving my entire life.”

I feel my face hardening. “So you just left.”

“Your mother didn’t love me anymore, James.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Anger thumps in my chest. “So what, even if that’s true—you still just left?”

“It felt like the only way.”

I have to close my eyes. “What about Siri? You never talk about her. Why didn’t we ever invite her out to visit?”

Dad lets go of an extended sigh. “It’s complicated. We thought it’d be healthier to have a clean break, that way we wouldn’t have to interact anymore. Our relationship was volatile. We fought all the time. It was always that way, but in the beginning the fights were smaller; we bickered about little things. It kind of made us more attracted to each other—I think because it’d always lead to—intense making up.”

“TMI.”

Dad has the audacity to laugh again.