Instead, he sat at the kitchen table and did the work.
He protected me.
Not out of bitterness.
Not out of suspicion.
Out of love that was also wise.
That combination is rarer than people think.
Walter could see people as they were without needing them to be different in order to love them. He saw what Suki was. He saw what Denton had allowed himself to become.
And he loved his son anyway.
You could see it in the trust.
He made sure Denton was not cut off entirely. He made sure there would still be something waiting for him at fifty-five, if he found his way back to himself.
That kind of intelligence is not cold.
It is the opposite.
It takes real courage to look clearly at something painful and still respond with care instead of cruelty.
As for me, I will not pretend the last year has been easy.
There are mornings when I still reach for Walter before I remember. There are days when I look across the room at his empty chair, and the grief is as fresh as it was the first week.
I do not think that ever fully goes away.
Maybe it is not supposed to.
But I also know I am still standing.
The company is still running.
Sixty-three drivers show up to work every morning because Walter built something real, and I have kept it real.
There is a kind of strength you do not know you have until you absolutely have to find it.
I found it.
I am still finding it.
Denton called last week.
We talked about nothing important. The weather. A restaurant he tried. A memory of his father from when he was young.
It was a small conversation.