The double doors opened and Gertrude came out onto the landing, and she saw the boy, and her whole face changed into something I had never once seen it do in thirteen years.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh. There he is.

There’s my boy.”

And she went down on one knee — sixty-nine years old, in a good dress, on a landing — and put both arms around a child, and said, into his shoulder, “Liam.

Look at you.

Look at you.”

She was crying.

I had known that woman for thirteen years and I had never seen her cry.