I stare at Henry. “I don’t remember any of this.”

“Theo wound up getting ten stitches in his eyebrow,” Henry says. “Because Jacob had gotten angry and knocked over his high chair when Livvie had her back turned.”

Now it is coming back to me-the panic we came home to with Jacob in total meltdown mode and Theo hysterically crying, a knot the size of his tiny fist rising over his left eye. Henry making the hospital run while I was left behind to calm Jacob. I wonder how it is possible to put something so far out of one’s mind, to rewrite history. “I can’t believe I forgot that,” I say softly.

Henry glances away from me. “You were always good at seeing what you wanted to see,” he answers.

And then suddenly, we both notice our son.

“What the hell?” Theo says.

I fold my arms. “My thoughts exactly,” I reply.

It is a strange thing to be in an airport and to not be celebrating a reunion or a departure. It is even stranger to sit in the backseat of Henry’s car and listen to him making small talk with Theo as if Theo isn’t smart enough to know that, at some point, a colossal bomb is going to drop.

When Theo went into the restroom at the airport, Henry came up with a plan. “Let me talk to him,” Henry said.

“He won’t listen to you.”

“Well, he ran away from you,” Henry pointed out.

The freeways here are white as bone and clean. There’s no cracking from frost heaves, like in Vermont. Shiny and happy and new. No wonder Henry likes it. “Theo,” I say, “what were you thinking?”

He twists in his seat. “I wanted to talk to Dad.”

In the rearview mirror, Henry meets my gaze. I told you so.

“Haven’t you ever heard of a phone?”

But before he can answer, Henry pulls into a driveway. His house has Spanish tiles on its roof and a plastic, child-size princess castle on the front lawn. That makes my chest tighten.

Meg, Henry’s new wife, bursts out the front door. “Oh, thank goodness,” she says, clasping her hands together when she sees Theo in the front seat. She is a tiny blonde with überwhite teeth and a shiny ponytail. Henry approaches her, leaving me to wrestle my own bag out of the trunk. Standing beside each other, with their blue eyes and golden hair, they look like a poster for the quintessential Aryan family. “Theo,” Henry says, all fatherly, too little too late, “let’s go into the library and talk a little.”

I want to hate Meg, but I can’t. She immediately surprises me by linking her arm through mine and leading me into the house. “You must have been worried sick,” she says. “I know I would have been.”

She offers me coffee and a slice of lemon-poppy seed cake while Theo and Henry vanish deeper into the house. I wonder if the cake was just lying around, if she is the sort of mother who makes sure there is a homemade baked good at all times on the kitchen counter, or if she’d popped it in the oven after Henry told her I was coming. I’m not quite sure which image upsets me more.

Her daughters (well, Henry’s, too) dart across the living room threshold to get a peek at me. They are sprites, little towheaded fairies. One of them wears a pink sequined tutu. “Girls,” Meg says. “Come on in here and meet Ms. Hunt.”

“Emma,” I say automatically. I wonder what these little girls make of a stranger who has the same last name they do. I wonder if Henry has ever explained me to them.

“This is Isabella,” Meg says, lightly touching the taller girl on the crown of her head. “And this is Grace.”

“Hello,” they chime, and Grace pops her thumb in her mouth.

“Hi,” I answer, and then I don’t know what to say.

Did Henry feel there was some balance to his second life, having two girls instead of two boys? Grace tugs on her mother’s shirt and whispers in her ear. “She wants to show you what she does in ballet,” Meg says apologetically.

“Oh, I love ballet,” I say.

Grace puts her arms in the air and touches her fingertips together. She begins to turn in a circle, wobbling only a little. I clap for her.

Jacob used to spin. It was one of his stims, when he was little. He’d go faster and faster until he crashed into something, usually a vase or another breakable item.

I already know it’s not true by looking at her, but if little Grace turned out to be autistic, would Henry run away again?

As if I’ve conjured him, Henry ducks into the room. “You were right,” he says to me. “He won’t talk without you there.” Whatever small satisfaction this gives me vanishes as Grace sees her father. She stops spinning and hurls herself at him with the force of a tropical storm. He lifts her into his arms and then tousles Isabella’s hair. There is an ease to Henry that I have not seen in him before, a quiet confidence that this is where he belongs. I can see it etched on his face, in the tiny lines that now fan out from his eyes, lines that were not there when I loved him.

Meg takes Grace on her hip and grasps Isabella’s hand. “Let’s give Daddy a chance to talk to his friends,” she says.

Friends. I loved him; I created children with him, and this is what we have been demoted to.

I follow Henry down a corridor to the room where Theo is waiting. “Your family,” I say. “They’re perfect.” But what I’m really saying is, Why didn’t I deserve this with you?

“Well, Mr. Bond,” the judge says. “Here you are again.”

“Like a bad penny,” I reply, smiling.

Jacob and I are in court again, this time without Emma. She had called late last night and left a message saying that she and Theo would be flying home today. I hoped to have good news for her when she arrived; God knows she would need some by then.

The judge glances over the half-moons of his glasses. “We’ve got a motion before the court for accommodations during the trial of Jacob Hunt. What are you looking for, Counselor?”

Sympathy for a client who is incapable of showing any himself… but I can’t admit that. After Jacob’s last outburst in court, I thought about asking the judge to let him watch the proceedings from a separate room, but I need him in full view of the jury in order to make my defense work. If I’m playing the disability card, they have to be able to see Asperger’s manifesting itself in its full glory. “First, Your Honor,” I say, “Jacob needs sensory breaks. You’ve seen how he can get agitated by courtroom procedure-he has to be able to get up and leave the courtroom when he feels the need to do so. Second, he would like to have his mother sitting at the defense table beside him. Third, due to Jacob’s sensitivity to stimuli, we ask that Your Honor not use his gavel during the proceedings, and that the lights be turned down in the courtroom. Fourth, the prosecution needs to ask questions in a very direct and literal manner-”

“For God’s sake,” Helen Sharp sighs.

I glance at her but keep talking. “Fifth, we request that the length of the day in court be abbreviated.”

The judge shakes his head. “Ms. Sharp, I’m quite sure you have objections to those requests?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I don’t have a problem with numbers one, three, and five, but the others are absolutely prejudicial.”

“Mr. Bond,” the judge says, “why are you asking for your client’s mother to sit at counsel table?”

“Well, Your Honor, you’ve seen Jacob’s outbursts. Emma Hunt serves as a coping mechanism for him. I think that, given the stress of a court experience, having his mother beside him would be beneficial to all involved.”

“And yet, Ms. Hunt is not with us today,” the judge points out. “But the defendant seems to be faring well.”

“Ms. Hunt wanted to be here, but there has been a… family emergency,” I say. “And in terms of stress, there’s a huge difference between coming to court for a motion and coming for a full-blown murder trial.”