But clearly you don’t. Jesus Christ!”

“Don’t act so superior. Let’s not forget how much you loved the sex. You certainly loved it more than I did.”

I shook my head. Nothing made sense.

She went to the kitchen, got a large plastic garbage bag and a roll of paper towels and brought them back to the den. She got down on her hands and knees and started cleaning my mess off the hardwood floor. I tore a few paper towels off the roll, took them to the kitchen, ran some water on them and brought them to the den, got on my knees and began washing the areas she’d cleaned. As we worked, she said, “You got Alison pregnant and gave me away.”

“We were children! We weren’t even married!”

“Oh, please. You got married a few months after I was born. You could have gotten me any time you wanted, but instead you and Mom decided to start a new life without me. I was shuffled from one foster home to the next, and each was worse than the one before, because the older I got the more things they could do to me.”

She inspected the floor carefully, then stood and got a mop and some disinfectant from her laundry closet, and finished cleaning the floor while I took the garbage bag to the garage and placed it in her trash can. I came back to the den as she finished up, then waited while she put the mop and disinfectant back in the closet.

When she reentered the room she said, “They usually placed me in a home where the foster parents had one or two kids, and sometimes other foster kids. And you know what the men always told me the day I moved in? They said, ‘I’m going to be like the father you never had, so don’t call me Rick. Don’t call me Frank. Don’t call me Jim. Don’t call me Bennett.’ They all said, ‘Call me Dad.’ And they introduced me to their sons and daughters and the other foster kids and said I should think of them as my real brothers and sisters. But you know what happened? The fathers and sons usually found a way to get me alone. While you and Alison were creating your perfect little family I was getting serial raped by grown men.”

“I—look. I know it was hard on you. But that doesn’t justify tricking Michael and me into having sex. It’s unnatural. It’s…perverted.”

“Are you kidding me David? I’ve been fucked by so many fathers and brothers in my life you and Michael are just one more set. The only difference is I genuinely care about you.”

“You’re sick.”

“If I am it’s your fault.”

“Your mom and I were young. We couldn’t take proper care of you.”

“You can tell yourself that all you want, but it’s not true. You had Michael, your little prince, less than two years after abandoning me. And you kept him. Fine. I could’ve accepted that. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted you to give up your own son. But let’s fast-forward six years: by then your business had taken off and you were making money hand over fist, and you looked around your perfect little kingdom and decided something was missing.