He walked down the short hallway and eased open the children’s door and stood there a while in the dark, looking at his sleeping grandchildren — Owen sprawled sideways, Zoe curled around a stuffed rabbit — and when he came back his jaw was set but his voice was level.

He came and sat down heavily at the little table, and for a moment he didn’t say anything at all.

He just looked around the apartment — the peeling paint, the one working burner, the water stain spreading across the ceiling — and Claire watched him do the arithmetic of it, watched a retired engineer take in the structural facts of the place where his grandchildren were sleeping and understand precisely what it meant that they were here. When he finally spoke, his voice was rougher than before.

“My grandchildren have been living like this,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “For months. While my son called me every Sunday about his remodeling.” He pressed his big hands flat against the table, as if steadying himself against it.

“Show me the paperwork,” he said. “All of it. From the beginning.”

Claire spread it across the table, and George went through it the way he must once have gone through engineering plans, slowly, page by page, missing nothing.