It had not been the ordinary loneliness of an old man outliving his friends.

It had been forty-five years of a specific, unhealable exile, a man who had lost a daughter to fire and a son and a wife to grief, all in a single winter.

“For the next four decades,” Arthur said, “Julian lived like a recluse.

He kept his tailor shop, and he was brilliant at his craft, and he worked, quietly, alone, year after year.

And he saved.