“You found him? I didn’t know.”

“I would have had to go into the house to fix the window, and I thought I shouldn’t until you—you know.”

“Yes.” Moved by his thoughtfulness, I gently slapped his shoulder. I could feel muscles under his sleeve.

But he flinched. He said, “I’m sorry about your father.”

“I’m sorry you had to find him.” I knew I had to say more. “And thanks for checking on him.”

“Didn’t do him much good, I’m afraid.”

“But you tried. He told me how you used to look out for him. Mow the lawn—”

“It wasn’t any trouble. After all, I got to know him when we were kids.”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t been in there yet, have you?”

“You know I haven’t if you saw me park,” I said a bit sharply.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

“I don’t want to trouble you anymore. I should do this.”

“It’s no trouble. But I don’t want to impose . . .”

We were circling around the issue, still awkward. In the end, of course, I accepted the offer.

We walked up the drive. Even the tarmac was rotten, I noted vaguely; it crackled softly under my weight. I produced a key, sent me by the hospital that had notified me of the death. I slid it into the Yale lock, and pushed the door open.

There was a noisy bleeping. Peter reached past me to punch a code into a control box set in an open cupboard in the porch. “He gave me the code,” he said. “The burglar alarm. In case of false alarms, you know. That’s how I was able to turn it off, when I broke the window to get in. In case you were wondering how . . . I was a key holder. But he had a deadbolt and a chain, which was why I had to break the window—”

“It’s okay, Peter,” I said, a little impatient. Shut up. He never had known when to do that.

He subsided.

I took a breath and stepped into the house.

Here it all was, my childhood home, just as it had always been.