“Your father-in-law loved that boy,” Mr.

Alvarez told me.

“But he never learned when to stop rescuing him.”

I had never heard anyone outside the family say it so plainly.

“Did Walter know?” I asked.

“Oh, yes.

He told me once that teaching a child to stand on his own is harder than holding him up.

Said he had made it all the way into old age before he figured it out.”