He became, in those years, the nearest thing I had to a father, and the nearest thing Lucas had to a grandfather, and the quiet, steady bedrock beneath the small and precarious world the two of us shared.

I did not know, sitting with him on those rainy afternoons, that he was watching all of it, and weighing all of it, and quietly making arrangements.

I only knew that a lonely old man and a grieving housekeeper had, somehow, between them, built something that felt a great deal like love.

I found out later that he had known it too, and had decided it was worth protecting.

Chapter 5 — The Funeral

He died in March, peacefully, in his sleep, in the great bed I had made up fresh for him that very morning.