“Most of this stuff is salvaged,” Stefan said. “I literally got it free and cleaned it up. I’m going to rent a storage shed when the season changes and keep the decorations there, so I can reuse them.”

“The grow lights must have been expensive.”

“They were, but Luck Sergenian approved them since I can use them again for the fall display!”

“Luck is her real first name?”

“Yep. She told me she was born three months early and her parents were superstitious.” He added, “I wondered how many people she’s had to tell that to. She actually said the same about me, asked me how many people did I have to tell that yes, I am that guy, and no, I am not dangerous.”

I thought about why Luck, a local celebrity in her own right who at the age of thirty-one was a home-grown legend as a businesswoman in Madison—first this, wealthiest that, youngest-ever the other thing—was not only trusting when it came to my son, but sufficiently urbane to be able to crack wise about it. “She told me she actually had to do some community service herself for possession with intent when she was in college,” Stefan told me. “Ten months. It was cocaine. The amount she had, it could have been prison time.”

“No wonder they call her Luck...”

“That’s exactly what she says.”

So maybe, this...this chance, this piece of luck, as it were, finally, would be the opening door. Stefan could walk through; we would stumble after him. We would try not to look back. An addict for hope is like an addict for anything: It only takes a taste to get a jones going. And so I let myself think that maybe my son had really turned a corner.

There were still two sides to the life he lived. I would hear him trading playful insults on speakerphone with Will as he got ready for a night out, and he would sound like every other guy his age—bombastic, silly, lobbing testosterone grenades into the air.

But even when I would hear his low voice coming from his room late at night, the sound of his crying, I let myself bless those noises, too. Even grief is feeling, I thought. And feeling outflanks numbness. It is a start: An embryo is an egg is a chick is an eagle. I let myself bless those sobs, awful as they were to hear.

Sometimes I would also hear him talking into his laptop microphone.

“It was her favorite ice cream, but I just throw it up, like how can I eat it if she can’t eat it?”

And...

“I think about it and, if I was sure I would get to be with her, but I don’t believe that way about after you die.”

And...