But I will say this.
It was significant enough that Suki could not simply walk away from it.
As for Denton, my son sat across from me in Elaine’s office on a Tuesday afternoon in May, seven weeks after his father’s funeral.
For the first time since all of it had begun, Suki was not in the room.
She had her own attorney by then.
Elaine had made it very clear that their interests were no longer the same.
Denton looked like he had not slept in a long time.
Honestly, he looked like his father.
The tired version.
The version Walter became when something heavy was sitting inside him and he had not yet found the words for it.
I did not speak first.
I waited.
Finally, Denton said, “I did not know about the doctor’s office.”
I believed him.
That was the hard part.
I believed him.
“But you knew she hired Ferris,” I said.
He did not answer.
Which was its own answer.
“You let her,” I said. “You knew what she was doing, and you let her bring that man to my house three days after your father died. You sat there and let her speak.”
Denton put his face in his hands.
I had rehearsed that moment.
For weeks, I had imagined myself saying all the things that came to me at three in the morning, when grief and anger took turns with me and neither one let me rest.
I had a whole speech ready.
Hard things.
True things.