I sat behind the dark walnut desk, the same desk where Aunt Margaret had managed her holdings for three decades, and watched Attorney Rachel Vance arrange three distinct legal folders.

Across from us sat Luca.

He was not wearing the tailored navy suit today.

He wore a dark gray jacket with frayed cuffs, a wrinkled shirt, and scuffed leather shoes, and the sharp, polished executive who had stood on my porch six months earlier had evaporated entirely into a man who looked perpetually exhausted.

His hands rested flat on his knees.

His knuckles were raw and red from the damp autumn weather, and I understood, looking at them, that the entry-level job involved standing outdoors, and that his life now contained a great deal of standing outdoors, and I felt, again, not satisfaction, but a strange and clean detachment, as though I were watching a stranger receive news about a life that had nothing to do with mine.