When the old keeper forgot one latch, the 400-pound silverback reached through the steel

on his work vest at 4:30 in the morning and waited by the front door until Linda woke and found him there, holding his lunchbox from a job he no longer had.

She called me after that. Her voice was steady until it wasn’t.

“I don’t know whether keeping him away is kinder,” she said.

“There may not be a kind version,” I told her.

“I hate that answer.”

“I do continue reading …