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

note, pressed it flat where one corner had lifted, and said, “Then help me keep you here.”

Tom sat down heavily at the table.

For a while no one spoke. The refrigerator hummed. A dog barked two houses over. Tom rubbed his thumb across a scar on his wrist, the one he had gotten years earlier from a broken hinge, not from an animal, though visitors always continue reading …