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"No," I tell him. "He didn't know about you until this summer."

"How long has he known?"

"Since the Pembrokes' party," I say.

"The day you both came running across the lawn."

Wells thinks about that.

"That's why he looked at us like that," he says.

"Yes, sweetheart. That's why."

"Why didn't we know?" Wells asks. His voice doesn't rise, but there's something underneath it that makes my throat close.

"Why didn't he know?"

This is the question I've dreaded since the day they were born, and I've rehearsed a hundred answers to it. None of them sounded right in my head, and none of them sound right now. So I tell him the truth, in words small enough for him to hold.

"When I found out I was going to have you, Ross and I weren't together anymore," I say.

"I was hurt, and I was scared, and I decided not to tell him. That was my choice, and it was the wrong one. He didn't leave you. He never had the chance to know you, and that's my fault, not his."

Wells looks at me for a long time. He doesn't forgive me. He doesn't blame me either. He simply takes the information and puts it somewhere I can't see, the way he does with everything, and I know we'll be having this conversation again in a week, and in a year, and when he's sixteen.

Miles has been silent through all of it, which for Miles is a kind of miracle. Now he scoots forward on the bed.

"Is he our dad forever?" Miles asks.

"Forever," I tell him.

"Can he still come over?"

"Yes," I say. "He wants to come over. He'll be back from London in a few days."

Miles considers this with enormous seriousness. Then he asks the question I'm not prepared for.

"Can we call him Dad?"

I don't know why that's the one that undoes me, but it is. I press my hand against my mouth and nod, because I can't trust my voice. Miles takes this as a yes and grins. Wells looks down at his hands, and for the first time tonight, I see his chin tremble.

"Only if you want to," I manage finally.

"You don't have to decide tonight. You can ask him."

"Can we ask him now?" Miles says.

I look at the clock on their nightstand. It's just past eight here, which means it's early morning in London. I texted Ross an hour ago, before I knew this was coming, only to tell him the boys had been asking questions. He answered within a minute: Call me if you need me. Any hour.

I call him on video. He answers on the first ring, sitting at a desk in a room I don't recognize, in a shirt he clearly slept in. His face changes the moment he sees the three of us crowded into the frame.

"Hi," he says carefully. "Is everything all right?"

"They know," I tell him quietly. "I told them."

I watch it land. He doesn't speak. He looks from me to Wells to Miles, and his eyes go bright in a way I have never once seen in all the years I've known him.

Miles doesn't wait. He leans so close to the phone that half his face disappears.