He hadn’t wrapped ice around a swollen ankle at midnight or driven three hours through a snowstorm to watch twenty minutes of a middle-school scrimmage.

He hadn’t done one single thing that had turned that scared little boy into the young man flying across that field.

He’d only shown up, in a good suit, in time to stand and cheer for the finished product.

And I knew, even in the heat of it, that the anger was not entirely fair, and I let myself have it anyway, just for those few minutes, because a man is allowed his few minutes.

Warren had suffered too, in his way — I did not doubt that Talia’s death had broken something in him that never fully healed.