It was not the scheme of a grieving week; it was too complete for that, too well supplied with casseroles and photo albums and gentle questions.

She had begun, I think, the moment she understood her brother was truly dying — had looked at a widowed sister-in-law of ninety, living alone in a valuable house atop a lifetime’s savings, and seen not a woman to be comforted but an opportunity to be worked.

And she had set about it the way she did everything, warmly, charmingly, so that every step looked exactly like kindness right up until you saw the whole staircase.

One quiet Tuesday she sat beside Lawrence’s bed and opened a velvet-covered album to a faded black-and-white photograph of him as a boy, standing beside her in front of their parents’ home in Dayton.