“Even got shot right above the knee one time for my trouble,” he said. “My other knee just wore down over time from favoring the one that got shot.”

He was discharged from the army after that. He came back to California and got a job as a carpenter. He said he’d always been good with his hands. He met a young woman and fell in love and got married.

“Did Grandmom know what you’d done?” Lucas said. “Did she know who you really were?”

“She knew every bit of it,” Gramps said. “I told her one night just like I told you.”

They finally decided to move to the other side of the country. If they were going to start a new life together, they might as well make it a really new life. He’d changed his name. He’d gotten married. He thought of Claremont as a new beginning.

“I decided,” he said, “to live a life and not an apology.”

He went to work for the post office. He became a dad. He got into coaching, he said, because of his son, who loved all sports, but basketball most of all. When people would ask him about his life before Claremont, he was vague enough with his answers that people finally gave up asking the questions.

“They just came to know me for who I was,” Gramps said.

Lucas knew it was getting late. He knew Gramps had been talking for a long time. But he wasn’t ready to leave yet.

And there was still a big question he wanted to ask.

“How did Dad find out?” Lucas said.

His grandfather pulled his hat off his head and ran an old hand through his short white hair. Then he put his hat back on.

“That’s the thing,” he said. “I didn’t know that he had, until now. I didn’t know that I’d already let him down before I let you down.”

“You never saw that letter?” Lucas said.

Gramps shook his head.

“So he never asked you about any of it?” Lucas said.

“He died,” Gramps said.

Lucas looked down and realized he’d been holding his basketball in his lap the whole time Gramps had been talking. He could feel himself squeezing both sides of it now, as if trying to squeeze the air right out of it.

He was feeling himself breathing hard. Even though it had been Gramps telling the story, it was Lucas who felt worn out by it.

“I’m sorry,” Gramps said.

“Not as sorry as I am,” Lucas said.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” he said, “or even understand why I did what I did. I’m still not sure why I did everything I did. Or didn’t do what I know I should have done at the time. I haven’t told you all of it tonight. But I didn’t leave out anything important.”