“I didn’t know,” he said. The exact words he had said to me at two forty seven in the morning three weeks ago in a darkened bedroom. The same words. The same voice. The same specific weight of a man who keeps discovering that the floor of a thing goes deeper than he thought.
“I know you didn’t,” I said.
“My father —”
“I know.”
“He did it again.” Something moved through his voice. Not anger exactly — something older and more tired than anger. The specific exhaustion of a man who has kept finding out that the person he most wanted to trust has kept finding new ways to be untrustworthy. “He sat in that study in Monterey and he made his statement and he cooperated and the entire time he had a financial stake in a development his son was publicly opposing on the Atherton Council.”
“Yes,” I
