Two years after the competition, Brian asked to meet me for coffee again.

The boys were both adults by then, and he had already spoken to them about the meeting.

Neither objected.

He looked older than he had the day he first saw them on stage.

Perhaps I did too.

We were no longer two people who had fought over a marriage.

We were two people looking at the long consequences of choices made in that marriage.

“I used to think that if I could explain why I left, they’d forgive me,” he said.