Josie hollered from the other room — “OLLIE!

I can’t find my purple crayon!” — the full-throated outrage of a four-year-old facing an unbearable injustice.

And I watched Ollie start to jump up, the old reflex, the one where every one of his sister’s cries was an emergency he had to solve before something bad happened.

He got halfway up.

And then I watched him catch himself, and settle back, and just call out, easy and annoyed and completely, gorgeously ordinary, “It’s under the couch, Josie!” — and go back to his coloring.

That was it.