But the peeling was not a reflex.

The peeling was deliberate, and it took time, and it required him to override a thing his son was doing — holding on to him — in order to leave.

Leo was not passively in the way.

Leo was gripping his father’s sleeve and asking him to stay, and Julian had to make a series of small, conscious, physical decisions to undo that grip, finger by finger, in order to go to someone else.

That is not instinct.

That is choice, enacted slowly, against a child’s resistance.