Grace placed my old earnings records beside our tax returns and the emails in which Julian asked me to postpone going back to the firm.

The contrast required no speech.

But the house held one more piece of evidence: a tiny blue notebook Noah had hidden under the loose board in his closet.

PART 17

I found the notebook while looking for a missing library book.

The cover had a cartoon whale on it, and the first pages were filled with drawings of robots.

Near the middle, Noah had written dates and fragments of conversations in the careful lettering he used for spelling tests.

Some words were wrong.