Sunday unfolded with the kind of deceptive calm that made Matthew Calloway believe, for a few hours at least, that life was finally giving him a pause. He had promised his mother a walk, not a rushed appearance between meetings or a distracted lunch interrupted by calls, but a real walk, slow and deliberate, through one of Denver’s old public parks where the trees still carried the quiet dignity of having witnessed entire lives pass beneath their branches. Helen walked beside him, her hand looped through his arm, her steps careful but steady, and she spoke about ordinary things like the changing weather and the way the ducks near the pond had grown bold enough to approach strangers. Matthew listened, nodded, smiled when appropriate, yet inside him there was a hollow space that no contract or achievement had ever managed to fill.