My father serves out his sentence and works an entry-level job with most of his wages garnished toward what he owes the estate.

My mother files her self-pitying motions and Raymond Steadman defeats them, gently, in minutes.

Chloe works retail two towns over; I saw her once, across a train station, and she turned and vanished into the crowd rather than meet my eye, and I felt nothing but a distant, tired peace.

I keep the cedar music box in a cabinet by my desk, and now and then I take it out and turn the little brass key and let the old lullaby play — the same one that used to drift out of the record player while I did my homework on his living room floor — and I read again the last note he left folded inside it, in which he told me I had never been the weak one, only the one strong enough to stay kind.

For a long time after his funeral I had wondered whether kindness was just a soft place the greedy aim for.

I know the answer now.