I said thank you. It was wildly inadequate and there is nothing else.

He said, “You drove nineteen hours.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the thank-you,” he said. “Nobody else came.”

He died eleven days later. Bennett called me. I already knew, somehow, which I don’t believe in and which happened anyway.

Chapter 14 — Eli

In May, three weeks before Sophie’s graduation, Ethan told us he wanted to be called Eli.