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"Dad."

I stopped him before he could say something he'd regret.

"I'm not going to do anything," he said. "I've had all night to come up with something to say and I've decided against every version of it."

"Thank you."

"Your mother wanted me to talk to you. I told her no." He drank some coffee. "I said that if our son has made a decision then our son has made a decision, and that the only thing worse than watching somebody do a thing you wouldn't do is being the person who told them not to."

"That's very restrained of you."

"It's killing me."

I laughed. I hadn’t expected to laugh before dawn.

"Can I ask you one thing," he said. "Not about Steven. About you."

"Go on."

"Are you all right?"

And I sat on my parents' terrace in the cold with my father not looking at me, which is how that man asks anything, and discovered that I had an answer and that the answer was no.

"I'm fine," I lied.

* * *

By nine the house had become an airport.

That's the only way I can describe it. People I’d never met carried things past me at speed. Two women set up in the west bedroom with a rolling case of equipment. A man stood in the hall on a phone saying "no, the second delivery" in a tone of authentic despair.

I sat in a chair with a towel around my shoulders while a woman named Kit cut my hair.

"So how'd you two meet?" she said, around a mouthful of clips.

"At a conference."

"Aw, that's cute. Was it, like, love at first sight?"

"It was a panel on data portability."

Kit laughed. People always laugh at that. I have learned over the last year that if you say a true thing flatly enough, everybody assumes you're being charming.

"And is this your first?"

"My second."

Her hands stopped for about a quarter of a beat and then kept moving, which was professional of her.

"Oh, nice," she said. "So no surprises, huh. You know how the day goes."

"I do."

"Bet you're way calmer this time."

"I am."

That's the part I want on the record. I was calmer.