The smell of fresh paint filled the doorway as I rolled the first long stripe of soft blue down the plaster wall by his bed.

Bennett sat in the middle of his rug with a sheet of peel-off star stickers in his lap.

He peeled off a yellow star with his thumb and held it up toward the ceiling.

“Can you reach the spot over my pillow, Mom?” he asked.

“Yes, I can reach it,” I said.

I stepped down off the low stepladder, took the little plastic star from his fingers, and pressed it firmly onto the white plaster right above the headboard.

Where the heavy iron floor safe had sat in his closet for thirty years, there was now just a low wooden bookshelf.