He sidled left and right before putting a foot forward. As he came into the raised foyer Feather hit the top step of the first-floor stairway. He’d made it two paces into Roundhouse and Feather was halfway down when they beheld each other.

From this first encounter I knew that I’d made the right decision. They bore the same expression: eyes wide with mouths slightly agape. They’d stopped moving and started feeling.

“Milo,” I said, “meet Feather. Feather, this here’s your uncle.”

The dogs went silent and retreated toward the koi pond.

Feather descended and Milo stepped up. When they came into proximity Milo put out a hand that Feather grabbed by the wrist. She pulled him into a filial embrace, holding on tight.

When they finally let go Milo just looked at her, amazement across his face.

“What?” Feather asked.

“You,” he said. “You look just like Robin did, like your mother did when I was a kid.”

“Should I go upstairs and make breakfast?” I offered.

“Come on, let’s sit near the pond while we wait,” Feather told her uncle.

That day, after the troubled early morning, was an oasis, far away from the Kilian job. Feather taught her uncle Milo how to swim. He showed her a family photograph album with pictures that included her mother and went all the way back to her great-great-grandparents who’d migrated to the U.S. from northern England before the Great War.

Breakfast and lunch were huge meals created by me and devoured by youngsters who had been starving for each other’s company for what felt like forever to them.

“Why does my grandmother hate me?” Feather asked Milo in the middle afternoon.

We were all, humans and dogs, sitting around the koi pond. I hadn’t thought about Eddie Brock or dead Craig Kilian in hours.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Milo said. There was a maturity in his voice I hadn’t noticed before. “She’s afraid of you.”

“Afraid of me? I’m just a kid. What could I do?”

“It’s not what you would do,” Milo said. “It’s who you are. You see, our parents brought me and Robin up to be good Americans, to believe in others. We learned their lessons, but when we started living lives where we knew all kinds of different people who had different ideas, they became afraid of what might happen. Robin lived with a black man and then I grew up and grew my hair long.”

“But my mom was a good person,” Feather argued against absent grandparents.

Milo heard her and managed not to cry.

At around 4:00 I suggested that Agosto Longo give Milo a ride back down to the Strip.

“I think we’ve had enough for the day, don’t you, Uncle Milo?” I said.

He and Feather hugged goodbye.

I called Agosto on Brighthope’s closed-circuit phone and sent Milo down on the funicular. He left the photo album for Feather and she hugged it tight, not letting go even in her sleep.