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“Evolution,” he said, “progresses through little mistakes. Some are beneficial and over time become refined into species-wide adaptive traits. Unfortunately, others are not beneficial at all. These cases of cystic fibrosis are well documented, and with modern drugs much of the discomfort can be alleviated. A palliative treatment routine can be readily administered within a proper facility.”
    â€œWill he live? What kind of help is available in the home? What could we have done to prevent this?”
    â€œLook, Mrs. Roebuck, let’s not make ourselves out to be victims here. In my experience there’s nothing more difficult than people who see themselves as victims. You need to stop thinking of this as some kind of cosmic injustice. Your first obligation is to your own mental wellness. If you don’t feel adequately prepared to care for this child, there are alternatives that may prove—”
    Buck leaned forward in his chair, picked up the compact carved maple desk between them, and held it several feet off the floor. Then he put it down and everything, including the phone, pens, and papers, remained in place. Afterward, the counselor adopted a different, more sympathetic approach.
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t do things like that, Buck,” said Amy afterward.
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    Over the years, caring for Kevin brought Buck and Amy closer together in many ways, though this seemed somewhat paradoxical because they had little time to themselves. They were silently united in rejecting all social norms that prescribed failure for their son. Kevin would have a good life and they would see to it. They encouraged each other, supported each other, and even pressured each other to never give up. When problems arose, they could be fixed. And when they couldn’t be fixed, they could be lived through. People could be happy in a different kind of way, and they were.
    In the meantime, however, Buck lost the larger portion of his wife.There was little of Amy leftover and he accepted that. She was too busy with Kevin and Florence. But it didn’t matter. He and his father had a construction company to run and he threw himself into his work with missionary zeal, always aware of the rising cost of his son’s medical needs.
    Buck liked construction and even suspected that his father had started the business to provide him with the incessant physical activity he had required as a young person—pushing wheelbarrows of wet concrete, shoveling gravel, and climbing ladders with pallets of shingles and brick. They had a mutual love of the work, and even many years later, when all the other workers had gone home, Buck and Wally remained at the job site, tying up loose ends and planning out the following day.
    Then Buck’s mother died and Wally’s interest in the company died with her. He continued another couple years and just gave up.
    â€œYou take it, Buck. I’m through,” he said one morning, looking out the window in the office in Grange.
    â€œNever thought you’d say that, Dad. What will you do? You ought to think about it a little longer.”
    â€œBuck, I can’t do it any longer.”
    And so Wally left the construction business and entered into what seemed to Buck and Amy like an uninterrupted two-year-long drinking binge. After wrecking his pickup twice, setting fire to his kitchen, falling asleep on his front lawn in winter, buying and selling a tavern in the same week, tearing up the road in front of his house with the construction company’s biggest dozer, urinating in front of the police station, and otherwise proving to everyone concerned that he could not live alone, he sold his house and moved in with Buck and Amy. He preferred one of the rooms on the second floor, he said.
    Amy agreed to it. She wanted him there. Wally would stop drinking, she said, as soon as he was living with family. And he did.
    As Amy had also foreseen, the pond