I had carried that weight for the whole of Lucas’s life.

I had carried it, quietly, behind a steady face, through eighteen years of work, and I had assumed I would carry it until I died.

And what Mr.

Christopher did, with that clause in that trust, was not merely give me a house.

A house is a thing.

What he gave me was the one thing I had not felt since before my daughter died, and had stopped believing I would ever feel again: he let me set the weight down.