“Thank you, Father,” I said, and something in my throat eased.

It was such a small thing, in the scheme of everything unfolding — a weekend visit deflected, a gate quietly kept.

But it was the first thing I had actively protected since the diagnosis, the first line I had drawn and held, and I understood, hanging up the phone, that I was going to spend the coming days drawing a great many lines, and that this small one, around the two people who had loved me without condition, was the right one to draw first.

Everything else was money and buildings.

This was my mother and father.

This one I would defend before all the rest.