“I travel so much for my business, it would be nice to have a second home to come back to, maybe in Dallas or Omaha,” Spratt said, expressing that he believed this line of thought to be the mark of a newfound maturity. “Some people put off this kind of planning for their whole professional lives—and those people never make time for a set of wife and kids living in geographical isolation from what you tell yourself and others is your ‘real’ life with your ‘real’ family.”

Spratt made it clear that, if he does not leave behind children in a distant city under an assumed last name, he will have felt he left his life’s course incomplete. “When a guy gets to be my age, he starts to think about raising children,” said Spratt. “Secret children, I mean. Children that my acknowledged and legitimate family will hopefully never find out about. Ever.”

Spratt went on to speculate that this was probably the age at which his own father settled down to start a secret family.