Christopher came to my office, and he sat across from me, and he revised his last will and testament.

He knew his son, Helena.

He knew him better, and more clearly, and more sadly, than anyone else on this earth.

And he made arrangements accordingly.”

Chapter 11 — A Conditional Trust

I sat in my kitchen chair, holding the receiver so tightly my knuckles ached, and my mind drifted back across the eighteen years — back to the very beginning of it, to a grief-stricken woman with an infant grandson and no idea how she would survive, whom a lonely old man had taken into his home and given not only steady work but, eventually, a place to belong.