It was one of the quiet facts of the last eight months that broke her heart the most: her son had appointed himself her protector, and was too young for the job, and would not be talked out of it.

She had tried. She had sat him down more than once and told him, in as many ways as she could find, that none of this was his to fix — that he was allowed to just be thirteen, to be angry and sad and useless about it like any kid would be, that she did not need him to be the man of the house.

He would nod, and agree, and then she’d find him at eleven at night with the chessboard set up against no one, working through a defense, his jaw tight in a way no thirteen-year-old’s jaw should be.

He had watched his father use cleverness as a weapon against their whole family, and he had decided, without telling anyone, that he was going to become more careful and more clever than that — that no one was ever going to outmaneuver the people he loved while he was watching.

Chess was where he practiced. Claire understood it, and it frightened her a little, and she was fiercely proud of him, all at once.

Before ten o’clock, Claire laid out everything she had built.