But the heart of it, the part that mattered, he already understood perfectly, better perhaps than I did, in the direct clear way of children.

A man who did not have to had chosen to save him.

That was the truth at the center of everything, under all the binders and lawyers and trusts, and my nine-year-old had gone straight to it and named it in three words.

Our guardian angel.

Sometimes a child sees the shape of a thing more truly than all the adults arguing over its details.

I pulled him close and kissed the top of his head, and I watched the firelight move across the walls of our home.