It was, I understood, the same steadiness he had shown crossing that ballroom floor, only now pointed somewhere that could not hurt him, somewhere it could grow.

One evening I came into the dining room and found him at the table, surrounded by library books, and when I looked at the spines I saw that they were about pre-law, and civil mediation, and how the courts work.

“Leo,” I laughed, setting a glass of juice down beside him, “you’re thirteen.” “Fourteen in four months,” he countered, with a grin that was pure boy, no shadow in it at all.

“Are you really planning to be a lawyer?” I asked him.