“Could you give me a copy of the policy?”

“I have one here for you,” I said, removing the file from my briefcase and handing it to him.

“Thanks,” he said. “Yes, if Nick actually declines the benefit, the estate will claim it.” He smiled. “You know what’s ironic?”

“No, what?”

“As Bill’s sole heir, Nick will get this money whether he wants or not.”

Without, I thought, having to answer any more of my questions.

Aloud, I said, “At least that’s one asset Bill’s family can’t claim.”

“I’m sure they’ll try. They’ve laid a stake to everything but Bill’s body.”

“What?”

“They left Bill lying in the morgue. The morgue called me. I couldn’t reach Nick about what he wanted to do, so I had him cremated.” He gestured to a small, rectangular antique-looking rosewood box on a bookshelf and said, “Meet Bill Ryan.”

11.

11.

“You don’t have to drive me to school every day,” Nick said, easing himself into Bill’s Mercedes. “I can take the bus.”

“I like driving you,” Bill replied, locking Nick’s door from the driver’s side.

Nick smiled. “At least let me lock my own door.”

“Someone has to protect you.”

Nick started to reply but apparently thought better of it. Bill knew Nick disliked it when Bill mentioned protecting or taking care of him because, he told Bill, as the youngest child in his family, he’d had enough of being taken care of. His brothers could still get a rise out of him simply by calling him “baby bro” and he complained that his sister mothered him more than his mother did. Nick wanted to be treated like a grownup but, from Bill’s perspective, Nick did not understand—because he’d had no experience of it—that what mostly comprised the grownup world was uncertainty, fear, regret and loss. That’s really what Bill wanted to protect Nick from: all that.