"And now?" I said.
He looked at me.
"And now I'd like — if you're willing — to know them," he said. "When they arrive. To be allowed to know them." The phrasing was precise, chosen, the language of a man who'd spent a lifetime taking things and was deliberately choosing to ask instead. "That's all I'm asking."
I looked at him.
I thought about Calder and Issa Aris — my own parents, who had loved in their peripheral, inattentive way, who had sent me away because they thought it was an opportunity and had written a letter they never sent about how they hoped someone was seeing me the way they should have. I thought about all the imperfect love in this story and what it did and didn't deserve.
"Yes," I said. "When they arrive. If you show up as yourself — not as Holt Mallen who controls a
