His father, I think, had long ago made his peace with the kind of son he had, though it grieved him; more than once, on those rainy afternoons, an old sadness would cross Mr.

Christopher’s face when Justin’s name came up, and he would change the subject.

And I watched that same Justin, three weeks after we buried his father, walk through the marble halls of the mansion with a cold little smile on his face — the smile of a man appraising a thing he has just come to own.

He did not see a home, in those halls.

He did not see the place his father had lived and loved and died.

He saw a number.