a way of landing on exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment that sometimes made Walter stop what he was doing and just look at the boy for a second, wondering what was going on inside that careful, observing mind.
Walter had never been a father.
He had not expected to be one.
He did not have a blueprint for it.
His own father had been absent in the particular way that absence can exist in a home, physically present but emotionally nowhere, a man who sat in
