The first time he brought three gingerbread men on a plate and put them down in front of me with enormous ceremony and said, “These are the broken ones, you can have those,” which is a sentence I think about a great deal.

The second time he stood in the doorway and said, “Were you in a war?”

And I looked at Jessi, and she gave me a fractional nod, and I said, “I was in a place where there was a war going on.

Mostly I moved things from one place to another.

It’s not very exciting.”

“Did you have a gun?”

“Leo,” said Jessi.