Whatever else is true, that child deserves a father who does not walk out on him on the first day he is alive.

Go and be that, if you can still be anything.”

“If you get on that plane,” he said, and his voice cracked, reaching for the old lever one final time, “we are finished.

Do you understand me?

We’re done.”

I looked down at my left hand, at the wedding ring I was somehow still wearing through all of it.

I worked it off my finger.

And I set it down on top of the suspension notice Arthur had handed him, the gold circle bright against the printed page.