Daniel smiled, briefly. Then his face went serious again. "I should have asked twice," he said. "I've thought about that every day for a month. I got her letter and I folded it up and put it in a drawer, and I told myself I was being honorable, letting her have her life. And maybe I was. But maybe I just didn't want to know, either. If I knew, I'd have had to do something. It was easier to be the guy who respected her wishes."
Eric looked out the windshield at the mesquite tree.
"If you'd known," he said slowly, "back then. If she'd told you. What would you have done?"
Daniel was quiet for a long moment.
"I honestly don't know," he said. "I'd like to think I'd have done the right thing. But I don't know what the right thing would have been. Taken her to court? Pulled a baby back and forth between two cities? Made her choose? You were sober forty days. I'd have been twenty-four, with a teaching salary and a studio apartment and a car with no air conditioning." He shook his head. "I've thought about it a lot this month, and I keep coming back to this: he had a good father. Whatever else happened, he had a good father the whole time. I'm not going to pretend I'm sorry about that."
Eric did not trust himself to say anything. He nodded.
"I'd like to know him," Daniel said. "If that's all right with you. Not to replace anything. Just to know him. To give him the part of the story he's missing. My mother wants to teach him to make tamales. Sofia wants him at her games. That's all. Only if you're okay with it."