He shaved a little and asked Fiona’s opinion.

Fiona said, “Still a drawing.” Harbor barked.

The river kept its own counsel.

Blaire began to write, in the evenings, a plain handbook for the sanctuary: how to change a lock, how to copy a bank page, how to tell a child that a door was mean without teaching the child to hate a whole city.

She wrote in sentences a tired woman could use at midnight.

When Irene read it, she said, “This is the first document here that does not sound like a brochure.” Blaire took it as the best compliment of her year.