He stood perfectly still on the gravel driveway.

The last time we had spoken honestly was four years earlier, over deviled eggs on Easter Sunday.

Every interaction since that dinner had been a polite fiction kept up for the sake of the grandchildren.

I stopped three feet away from him.

The bitter wind swept between us, kicking up small gray stones.

“You fought hard,” Walt said.

His voice sounded thin and tired in the wind.

He said it as if it were an absolute, undisputed fact.