"My mom used to say that the world only works because some people are paying attention when other people aren't. She said most people don't pay attention. She said the ones who do are the ones who hold the world up." Richard did not trust his voice for several seconds.
"Your mother sounds like she was a remarkable woman."
"She was. She made me promise to keep paying attention, even when I was tired, even when nobody was watching me. She said paying attention was the most important thing a person could do."
"You kept your promise, Elijah."
"I tried." Richard put his hand slowly and very gently on the small head of the boy beside him. Elijah did not move away. After a moment, he leaned his cheek very lightly against the side of Richard's leg, the way a child leans against a tree he has decided is solid. They stood like that for a long time watching the mist lift off the lake while in the city behind them a man in a charcoal overcoat was being booked into a holding cell and a mechanic was naming names, while a small, kind man named Mr. Patel was about to receive a phone call that would change his life and a social worker named Mrs. Adame was already at her desk filing the paperwork that would begin slowly and properly and without fanfare the legal building of a family that the world had not seen coming.
Elena's lemon trees three hundred miles away in the side garden of the estate were heavy with fruit. It was going to be a good day. It was going to be the first of many.