And I was Mirren — the quiet daughter, the practical one, the one who was reliably somewhere in the background handling whatever needed handling.

I was the one who sorted our father’s medications into the little daily boxes and paid his bills when his hands got unsteady and, in the last week, slept upright in a vinyl hospital chair beside his bed so that he would not wake in the dark alone.

Leon visited that hospital room twice.

He was very moving both times, at the foot of the bed, for the benefit of whoever was watching.

I was the one who was there at three in the morning when there was no one to perform for.

Our family had decided, years before, that Leon was the important one and I was the dependable one, and they had never once revisited the decision.