He fixed the fixtures that broke, carried the things too heavy for me, took on the hundred small practical tasks of a household that had lost the man who used to do them.

He once changed a flat tire for me in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin, because I had stood staring at the thing in the driveway having genuinely forgotten that ordinary objects like cars and tires went on existing and needing attention even after your life had come apart.

He was kind.

He grieved too; they had been close, he and Lucas, and I never doubted that the loss had carved something out of him the way it had out of me.

I saw it in him, in those years — the hollowing, the way he aged faster than he should have, the new silences.