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.

Eudora came through about forty people, past her own son, and she got down — properly down, on a marble floor, at seventy-six — in front of four eight-year-olds in navy coats.

And she said their names.

All four. In order. Isaiah, Micah, Nia, Zuri.

She knew their names.

Not the children. Not you must be. Their names, out loud, on a floor, in front of a hundred and twenty people, in the right order.

She knew which was which. She got Micah and Isaiah the right way round, which almost nobody does on a first meeting, and she did it with her hands shaking.

I stood about four feet away in a command uniform with four rows of ribbon on it and could not make one sound.

Pell has told me since that I did not move for about eleven seconds, which is the same eleven seconds Eudora did not move for on those steps.