Bradley, who had sat in patient silence the whole while, and I thanked him for keeping my husband’s confidence.

Then I drove my old sedan home through the gray Cincinnati afternoon.

I spent that entire evening sitting in my dark living room, not turning on the lamps, staring at the ceiling the way Lawrence used to stare at the ceiling in his last months, and I understood at last what had been moving behind his eyes all those afternoons.

He had been building this.