The kids looked at Alex uncertainly, the little one with the parakeet head-tilt he’d clearly picked up from his mother. It was not at all clear to Alex how this served as a reasonable explanation for his presence in their house at 8:00 a.m., but it seemed to have at least diverted their attention.

“Have a good day,” Kate said. “Tell your dad I said hi.”

The older one fell into an armchair with a sigh and took out his phone. The little one wandered toward the kitchen without saying anything. Satisfied enough, or already bored. Both.

“You need breakfast, Matt?” she said. She gave Alex a small nod and followed her son out of the room. Alex opened the door and then paused at the threshold.

“’Bye, Jason,” he said.

The kid was still staring at his phone.

“Yes, he’s rather a fat Batman, I do say,” Jason muttered in a British accent, not looking up.

“Listen,” Alex said.

This, this would be the moment to tell the kid what was really going on with him and Kate, to lay some truth on him. It was an awful generational cliché, but really: the kid still hadn’t looked up from his fucking phone! The roof could come down and Jason wouldn’t notice. He wouldn’t even know if Alex walked out the door without finishing his sentence. And, in fact, that was the only adult option available.

He’d been on this hiking trail at least a dozen times, but he knew his father would be impressed by it, and he was feeling a stronger-than-usual desire for his approval. He wondered if his father wanted to strangle his stepchildren the way that Alex wanted to strangle Kate’s kids. Probably more, but in a different way, since he actually knew them, and the feeling was probably tempered by the fact that he was a sixty-year-old man who had raised two children of his own, and knew, maybe, not to let them wield power over him.