He was steadier than he had been, though the steadiness had a carefulness to it, the way a man walks who has fallen once and does not take the ground for granted anymore.

He went to his counseling.

He did his community service without complaint, and talked about it, sometimes, in a way that suggested it had given him something rather than only taken his time.

He was, slowly, becoming himself again — not the anxious, overextended man who had reached for an easy fifty thousand dollars, and not the hollow, terrified one who had wept by the pool, but someone new and better who had been forged out of both of them.

“She’s really okay?” he asked me quietly that afternoon, while Lily ran into the living room to put on her cartoons.