I sat with a lawyer in Dallas for two hours in 2019 and we talked about what happens if she goes to college and what happens if she gets married and what happens if she gets sick, and at no point in two hours did either of us sit down and say out loud: what does this pay, and to whom, if she is dead.”

I said what anybody would say, which is that it does not pay anybody, that the remainder goes to charity, that it was drafted properly.

And my father said: “Nine hundred thousand dollars, Valerie.

In a probate court, on a petition, months before anybody looks.

“I designed a lock and I never once walked round the back of the house.”

What he did about it is the part worth recording, and it took eighteen months and most of what he has left.