Harrison Vance was standing in the kitchen doorway with his coat still on and his keys in his hand, having come in through the side door in the middle of it.

His face was doing something Maya has never been able to describe.

Leo turned around.

“Dad,” he said, “don’t be mad at Maya.

It was me.

I bumped her.”

This was not true.

It was a seven-year-old’s first act of speech in two years and he spent it on a lie to protect somebody, and Harrison Vance dropped his keys on the floor and went down on his knees in his own kitchen and put his arms around his son and wept without any dignity at all, in front of the housekeeper, for a long time.