It was in there. The kindness was in there the entire time. It existed. It was simply never allocated to me — not because I hadn’t earned it, but because he had a system for sorting people and I had been sorted, and the sorting happened long before I was old enough to affect it.

I cannot fix that by showing up on Tuesdays. He is not going to give me the thing now, because the man who withheld it isn’t home. What is home is something underneath him that is kind to strangers.

I have decided that is information, and that information is better than nothing, and that I would rather know the kindness existed than believe he didn’t have any.

Marcus comes most Tuesdays of the month he’s here. He is markedly better at the facility staff than I am. He learns their kids’ names.

Sydney came twice. She is eighteen now and asked our father four questions about his childhood that I would never have thought to ask, and got two real answers, which is two more than I’ve gotten in three years.

Linda came once, in the second year. She stayed eleven minutes and cried in the parking lot and has not been back, and I have stopped constructing that into a character flaw.