“Unk Artie!” she shouts, and she trots across the deck with her uneven, joyful, headlong stride, and my brother drops to one knee and catches her as she barrels into his arms.

He has brought her a set of wooden puzzle maps; she mastered the fifty states in three days flat, memorizing the shapes, and we are working on the capitals now.

He has also brought, in a thin leather folder, the last of the papers.

“The final decree came through,” Arthur told me, once Maya was settled on the deck floor tearing the ribbon off her new puzzle.

“It’s done, Julian.