He called her nine days later.

She was, for the first several months, wonderful.

He would say that afterward to his attorney, and to his sister, and eventually to a therapist he did not expect to like: she was wonderful, and I am not an idiot, and both of those things are true.

She remembered names.

She remembered the names of his foremen.

She asked about the girls constantly and by name and with specificity — not how are the children but did Lorelai’s science fair thing get finished, the one with the magnets. She sent them presents that were exactly right: not extravagant, not cheap, correctly aimed at their actual interests, which meant somebody had been listening.

He should have wondered, later, how she knew about the magnets.