“Of course you know! Everyone knows the truth about my origins—my mother, who is my mother. My father, who is not my father. My brother, who is my brother but not so much my friend. Costanza, who seemed to be my friend but isn’t really. Yeah, especially my friend Costanza.”

He went on, “I talked to you more than once, about this feeling I’ve had, this feeling of not fitting with Henry, this feeling of not fitting with myself. And you knew. You knew and you never told me. You never got Henry to tell me.” His voice was shaking with anger. “Yeah, you’re my friend. Yeah, right.”

It took Costanza some time to catch up—to catch on. When she did, she said, “Andrew, wait. Where did you get the idea—I have to ask you—that I knew? I only found out last night. Henry only told me for the first time last night.”

Andrew stopped. “Henry only told you last night for the first time that he is not my genetic father.”

“That is correct.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“But it’s true.”

“When you did a round of IVF with him before, you didn’t know?”

She drew her hand through her hair. “No, I did not. Absolutely I did not.”

“You didn’t know that he had ‘morphologically problematic’ sperm?”

“I knew that, and I knew that he could get around that, but I didn’t know anything else.”

“That’s not what Henry said. Henry said that you knew then. That you’ve known all along. All along, he clearly said. Since before the IVF.”

The room went blurry before Costanza’s eyes. “But it’s not the truth, Andrew.”

“So he lied.”

“Yes,” she said slowly, “Henry appears to have lied.” Her legs went soft on her. She sat down on Andrew’s bed.

Andrew sat down next to her. For several long moments they sat there in silence. Then Andrew said, “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Costanza said in a faraway voice.

She looked at Andrew. His eyes reddened.

“I suppose … I suppose he cares enough about what you think about him to want you to think that he would never have put me through IVF without first telling me what he told me far too late in this process. That was already bad enough, hard enough for me to find out last night of all nights. Now this…”

There’s nothing else to show you, to tell you.

You’re seeing me naked now.

“This makes me think I don’t know your father very well at all, and that perhaps I never did.”

“He’s not my father,” Andrew said emotionally.