He was looking for a black Lexus. He was calm and articulate and completely certain about the car, and he became agitated only when an officer told him it wasn’t there.

He sold that Lexus in 2019, four years earlier, to help cover what was left of the litigation.

I got to the emergency department at three. He was in a curtained bay in a gown with his cardigan folded on the chair beside him, and he was wearing two watches, one on each wrist, and I have thought about those two watches more than almost anything else in the last three years.

“Dad.”

He looked up, and for about two seconds he did not know me at all — his face did the polite, hospitable thing a stranger’s face does — and then it snapped into place and he was completely himself.

“Claire.” Flat and cold and instantly familiar. “Who called you?”