Nolan last. He stopped on the threshold and looked at me — the full, direct weight of it, no calculation in it, just a man looking at his son’s wife and saying the thing he had apparently decided needed to be said before he walked out the door.
“I watched you in that Pavilion,” he said. “When Julian walked in. When the room went —” He paused. “I watched you stand there and I watched you make a decision in thirty seconds that most people couldn’t make in thirty years. You chose the harder thing because it was the right thing.” He held my gaze. “I spent thirty four years being unable to do that. I want you to know that I know the difference.”
I looked at him for a moment.
“Take care of him,” I said. “Not his company. Him. He needs his father — the real version. Not the managed one.”
Nola
