His own father had known his children for two years, had loved them by mail across an ocean, and had chosen to let him find out over a grave — and I watched him understand that this, too, was a thing he had earned, and that the gentlest man in his family had judged him and found the judgment necessary.

Chapter 11 — Goodbye, Grandfather

I did not let any of it go on in front of my children longer than it had to.

They were young, and they had come for a reason, and the reason was not to watch a man come apart.

“Let’s say goodbye,” I said to them, in the ordinary voice I use for bedtimes and skinned knees, and the whispering crowd parted for us, because there are moments when even the cruelest onlookers understand they are in the presence of something they should not interrupt.

One at a time, my children went to the grave.