In those final months, Lawrence’s younger sister, Shirley, began coming around our house far more than she ever had before.

I thought nothing of it at the time.

A brother was dying; of course his sister would want to be near.

She brought casseroles I had not asked for and did not need, heavy dishes that crowded my refrigerator, and she brought old photograph albums we had not opened in decades, and she sat for long afternoons that I took, in my innocence, as grief and devotion.

Shirley had always been the charming one in Lawrence’s family — warm, graceful, quick with a sympathetic word and a hand laid gently on your arm.