I had discovered that I had never had him at all — that four decades of what I had believed was one of the central relationships of my life had been, on his side, a long and patient con.

That is a specific and disorienting grief, and it does not have a name, and I have not fully recovered from it, and I am not sure I will.

You can mourn the dead.

It is much harder to mourn someone who is alive, and looks exactly like your friend, and turns out to have been a mask the whole time.

And yet.