The farm stood under the dark with its lights burning low and warm. Inside it, women slept behind locked doors that belonged to them. A baby snored softly in the room at the end of the hall. The tomato vines climbed their strings in the greenhouse George repaired by hand years before I ever knew why. The cameras watched. The gate held. The files were in order. The next week’s counseling schedule was posted on the office board. Someone had left muddy sneakers by the back steps. Someone else had put a pie on the cooling rack with a note asking nobody to touch it till morning, which guaranteed half of it would be gone before sunrise.
It was not tidy.
It was not simple.
It was not safe because one man had willed it into being and could therefore protect it forever.
It was safe because many hands now held it up.
That, more than anything, was the difference between what George had built and what I made of it after he was gone.
He had carried salvation like a secret because guilt taught him privacy and grief taught him fear.