He decided, at ten years old, to start protecting me.

I did not know this yet, on the morning of the handshake, and it would be years before I understood the full weight of it.

But it is worth pausing on, because it is the root from which everything else in this story grew.

A ten-year-old boy, watching his mother grieve and worry, had not thought: someone should take care of us.

He had thought: I should.