She brightened as she drew the van to a stop in front of her son’s school. He’d be surprised to see her, and they’d go out for hamburgers and maybe an early movie, just the two of them. Shay had it all planned out.

Only Hank scowled at her and got into the car grudgingly, his eyes averted.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” Shay said. “What’s the problem, tiger?”

“Nothin’.”

Shay shut off the car’s engine and turned to her son. She moved to ruffle Hank’s hair, but he pulled away. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

He flung her a defiant look. “Yes. You found out about your dad, but you won’t tell me anything about mine!”

Shay shrank back a bit, stunned by the force of the little boy’s rage. “I didn’t think you were ready,” she said lamely.

“I wonder about him all the time and there’s nobody to tell me! It isn’t fair, Mom!”

Shay closed her eyes for a moment, trying to gather strength. Hank was right. Keeping him in the dark about Eliott had not been fair. Hadn’t she been angry with Rosamond for not telling her about Robert Bretton? “I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

Over take-out food and the few photographs Shay had kept of Eliott, she told Hank the whole story. She told him, as kindly as she could, about the stealing and about the librarian and she ached at the hurt she saw in her son’s eyes.

Hank listened in stony silence and when Shay had finished talking, he snatched up one of the snapshots of his father and went out into the backyard to sit disconsolately at the picnic table. It was cold out there, and windy, and Shay had all she could do not to go out and drag her son back inside.

Presently, he came in on his own, his small shoulders slumped, his eyes averted. Shay, conscious of his dignity, did not speak or move to touch him.

“I’ll take my bath now, I guess,” he said.

“Okay,” Shay replied, looking out the window so that she could hide the expression on her face. The picture of Eliott was blowing across the surface of the picnic table in pieces.

At breakfast the next morning, Hank was in better spirits and Shay blessed the resiliency of children. In fact, she tried to emulate it.

She was humming when she got to the office and, just to give the day a little pizzazz, she went into the Christmas-ornament shop on the first floor and bought a fancy cornhusk wreath for the reception room. Clydesdale was positioned in the curve of the bay windows, and Shay hung the wreath on his head. “Hail, Caesar,” she said, before going off to find a hammer and a nail.

The entire day went well and Shay was feeling better than she had in days when she got home. Hank was there, idly pounding one fist into his baseball glove and watching Sally, his babysitter, paint her toenails.