San Francisco in October has a specific quality of light that feels like a dare, too bright and too clear, the kind of city morning that makes everything look like it’s in high definition and refuses to let you hide in soft edges.
We flew on the Hargrove jet, the three of us, which was an experience in studied neutrality. Callum worked on drawings. Damien worked on documents. I read a book I wasn’t absorbing and watched them both in my peripheral vision and thought about how completely improbable this scene was, how two months ago I had been in my father’s house eating pancakes I couldn’t taste and now I was on a private aircraft with two half-brothers and a debt and a mystery and a marriage that had started as a transaction and was becoming something I no longer had a clean word for.
Th
