My ex-husband invited the former wife he believed was still childless and miserable to his family’s Christmas at their military estate. He never imagined I would arrive on a government tactical helicopter — with four eight-year-olds who had his face.

Those four children have now had eleven weeks with their grandmother. They will have about twelve more.

Twenty-three weeks, give or take. That is the entire ledger of this story and it is the only number in it that matters.

And I am the one who cost them the first eight years.

Not Grayson. Grayson cost them their father and that is his and he can carry it.

I cost them her. In four words, on a telephone, in a kitchen, at twenty-seven — and then I told the story about it for eight years as though it were the best thing I had ever done.

Grayson has rung four times since Christmas.

I have answered two of those. Both calls were about eleven minutes and in neither of them did that man say one sentence that was actually about his children.

He asked about the helicopter. Twice.

Liesl wrote to me in the third week of January.