A directive, signed personally by Senator Robert Vance, instructing the board of my father’s foundation to deny all assistance to one specific family.

And the address of that family, printed at the bottom of the page, was a modest street in a town I had heard Lucas speak of only once, with great care, as the place he had grown up.

Lucas picked up the paper with shaking hands, and read the signature, and read it again.

“My father was sick,” he said, and his voice, always so steady, came apart in the middle of it.

“For two years.

We applied to three different funds.