I would spend his fortune, and his blueprint, walking as many families as I could reach out of the dark and into the light.

That afternoon I sat at a desk in the light-filled office, a silver-framed photograph at my elbow, the one of my mother and father on the sunlit pier, twenty-two years ago, their faces bright with hope before the storm.

I had set it beside my mother’s favorite pen and my father’s old brass pocket watch, the three of them together on the corner of my desk.

Out the tall window, on the street below, a young mother walked past holding her small daughter’s hand, and the little girl was laughing, jumping over the cracks in the pavement, entirely safe, entirely free, warm in the spring sun, held by the hand of a mother who did not have to be afraid.