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"I'll be in in a second," I told her.

"OK," she said. Katherine walked up to the door, turned and pushed on the handle, and discovered, of course, that the door was locked. She turned to give me a quick look of assessment ― You are my father, the look seemed to say, and your front door is locked and you cannot open it ― then reached behind her, unzipped one of the backpack's many pockets, pulled out a set of keys, and expertly unlocked the front door. This was the most heartbreaking thing she'd done thus far ― there is nothing sadder than a child with her own set of keys ― and I would have cried right there, if Christian hadn't suddenly been around my legs, tugging on them and me as though we'd fallen right into our old game, in which I was the marauding giant and he the pint-size villager determined to topple me.

"Hey, bud," I said, holding him close to me. "Hey, guy." I was speaking in that awkward, bluff way fathers speak to their young sons, knowing that it won't be too long before their sons will grow up enough to tell their fathers to stop being so bluff and awkward.

"That damn car seat," my father-in-law said. He was right in front of me; his breath smelled of coffee and the Styrofoam cup it came in. "I couldn't get Christian out of that damn thing." His voice had a transportational effect on Christian: he disappeared from my legs and a moment later he materialized on the slab with his sister. Both of them waved at me and then vanished into the house.

About my father-in-law: He was shorter than me and slim, wore ― and as far as I know still wears ― pressed khaki pants and comfortable, broken-in loafers bought in the closeout section of the L.L. Bean catalog. You'd never see him wear a shirt without a collar and he was wearing a collared shirt now, with broad red stripes and the sleeves buttoned. I'd never seen him wear jewelry except for his wedding band. His wife, Louisa, only briefly enters this story, but she figured largely in her husband's: at extended family dinners, I often caught him looking at her, his eyes wet and grateful ― grateful, I guess, to have her as his wife, and maybe to have the eyes with which to see her, too. He looked at Anne Marie, his only daughter, in much the same way. He was a good husband and father, is what I'm saying. Of course, he was a racist, too, as I mentioned earlier; it probably does no good to say that he wasn't a racist unless the subject of race was raised, and then only some of the time. This is not to say that he wasn't a racist, but that when I see him now, I see his racism competing with his other, better qualities. I mostly liked him, and I wanted him to like me, and he had, too, mostly, I think, until now.

"Please leave Anne Marie alone," he said. The disappointment was heavy in his voice, pulling it down to its lowest levels. His eyes were baggy and resentful, and I felt sorry for dragging him into all this. My father-in-law had just retired after thirty-odd years of being an insurance claims investigator. He had finally paid off the mortgage on his house. His daughter had a marriage that had seemed to work; she had two kids, her own house, her own life. And now this. What a terrible thing it must be to be an aging father and grandfather and have to take on a second load of familial trouble just when you'd gotten rid of the first.

"I can't leave her alone," I said. "I just can't."

"You have to," he said.

"You don't want me to leave her with that" ― and here I had trouble finding the right word to do justice to the specific feeling I had about this specific person ― "guy, do you?"

"I know," he admitted, and this gave me some hope. "He worries me. But still, Anne Marie wants you to leave her alone."

"I can't," I repeated. "I love her."

"I know you do, Sam," he said, and I got that terrible shivery feeling you get when things are serious enough for people to use your name in conversation. "But I don't know if she loves you anymore."

With that, he, too, disappeared inside the house