“Scared out of his mind and running it like a job,” he said. “Never saw anything like it. He had a checklist. He had a checklist for a thing you can’t have a checklist for.

And he’d sit in my kitchen at night after the boys were down and he’d go over it, and about once a week he’d get to the end of it and just come apart for ten minutes and then put it away and go to bed.”

“Did he talk about me?”

“Every time.”

“What did he say?”

“That you’d have found a better way.” Caleb looked at the mountains. “He said it more than once. He said, *Claire would’ve thought of something I didn’t.* I don’t know if that’s true.