Bruce’s mother had died when he was ten years old — died at the hands of his wealthy, respectable father, over years, while the important people in their community looked the other way because the family was important too and no one wanted the trouble.

Young Bruce had been the one to find her. He’d hidden under his bed for hours afterward, a child alone with a thing no child should carry.

He had grown up and made a fortune and spent a great deal of it, quietly, on shelters and clinics — and he had kept his own heart locked in a room no one was allowed into, for decades, because the last time he’d loved someone in a house like this, no one had come to save her.

And then he had walked into a charity gala and watched a rich woman strike a servant in front of forty people who did nothing.

I understood, finally, why he had crossed that room.

My daughters, meanwhile, were coming back to life in front of me, and it undid me a little more each day.