There was nothing to weigh.

On one side of the scale was my comfortable life — the quiet, the freedom, the Saturdays that belonged to me, the whole unencumbered shape of a man who answered to no one.

On the other side were Russ’s kids.

That is not a scale.

That is not a decision a person of any decency stands around deliberating.

You do not weigh your Saturdays against your dead brother’s children; you just pick up the children and let the Saturdays go, and you do not miss them, or if you do you never say so, because what you got in the trade was not a burden but the only thing that has ever made my particular life mean anything.

I gave up a great deal in those two weeks, on paper.