We watched a group on the playground tussle over the single working swing. “My sister has decided to go for her PhD. My mother is thrilled. All of them are in Italy, you know. My parents and my sister and her fiancé. Some monastery outside Florence. There isn’t supposed to be Wi-Fi, but somehow the Judge got an email out to the whole family. She couldn’t be prouder of Jessica.” He said this last line with the grand sweep of an arm.

“And you’re still waiting for your affirmation?”

“Affirmation? Hell, I’m still waiting for her to say, ‘I love you, Robert.’”

“She loves you,” I assured him, recalling the way she had spoken about her son that night in the glow of her kitchen, the pain in her voice when she’d acknowledged their estrangement.

“I know that,” Bo conceded. “Just would be nice to hear it from time to time. I have this chronic fear that I’ll never make her proud.” He rubbed his knees and sighed. “What am I doing, Daisy? I passed up a vacation with my family to help Miles become a meme?”

I scratched the back of my damp neck. When Bo put it like that, it made me realize the frivolousness of our so-called accomplishment. Still, I couldn’t trivialize this event we’d worked so hard on. Because then where would that leave the list I’d made after Charleston? Where would that leave me? “We’re hopefully doing some good. We’re getting the message out, in whatever way people will receive it. Even if that is solely through GIFs.” When this didn’t seem to have an effect, I nudged him with an elbow. “You’re really going through something here. Is this crisis early midlife, or simply existential?”

He smiled, but it quickly slid off his face. “I just—do you ever think, what if I’m wasting my life? What if I accomplish a whole lot of nothing? The fear lives here”—he patted his heart—“and it is constant. I can’t get rid of it. How do we shake it, Daisy? Please tell me you know.”