He had watched his sister her whole life, and he had predicted her like weather.

Reading his letter, I kept being struck by how completely he had foreseen it — not in vague terms, but precisely, move by move, as though he had been handed her playbook.

She will offer to take you into her home.

She will speak of your living arrangements.

She will say you cannot manage alone.

He had written those predictions three months before Shirley spoke the words almost verbatim in that very office, and the accuracy of it was eerie and, underneath the eeriness, unbearably moving.

He had known his sister that well.