“Mom,” he said gently, “you are the person I most admire in the world. You and my wife. That will never change. What you did, having me alone when you were still a college student, graduating, working in a highly competitive field, raising me to be a good person . . . it was remarkable. You are remarkable.”

Her face softened just a little. “That’s true.”

“The way you loved and took care of Lauren . . . and me . . . don’t think for a second that I will ever, ever forget that.”

She looked away, her mouth trembling a little, her equivalent of a sobbing wreck.

“But I’d like to meet my father. It won’t change anything. I just want to . . . know.”

She wiped her eyes on her napkin. Took another bite of cake, a sip of coffee milk. “You know his name.”

“Yes. Christopher Zane.”

“He was from Indiana. His parents had a farm. He was getting his degree in . . . gosh, what was it? Environmental engineering. Or agricultural engineering. Something like that. He was at MIT, I was at Harvard. He went to Notre Dame for his bachelor’s, and on our first date, he got mad at me because I didn’t know who the Fighting Irish were.” She rolled her eyes.

Josh’s head was buzzing, even as his brain memorized the facts. That was more than his mother had told him about his father in his entire life.

“We dated for six weeks. I was a strict Lutheran, remember, and I thought premarital sex was for slutty girls, got carried away and had unprotected sex. I was stupid, I was in denial, so I told myself I had just skipped a period or two.” She sighed. “I knew, though. I kept hoping I wasn’t.” Her head jerked up. “Don’t get me wrong, Joshua. You’re the best thing in my life. I don’t regret you for one second.”

“I know that.”

“Good.” She patted his hand, then resumed stabbing her cake. “So when I couldn’t pretend anymore, I took a test and voilà! Pregnant. I told him. We fought. Abortion wasn’t on the table, not for me. We talked for about two seconds about getting married, but it was already clear we weren’t going to work. He said he’d ‘pay his share.’” She made air quotes around the words. “Then he went off on a project of some kind, some summer program, said he would call me when he got settled, and I never saw him again. I sent him a letter at his MIT address, which was the only one I had. It came back. His email address was defunct. I called him at his last known phone number. It was disconnected. That September, I called MIT, and they said he was no longer enrolled there.”

Silence settled over the kitchen. Outside, sleet started pattering against the window.