And I set it down, and I looked at the brass compass on my desk with its needle pointing steadily north, and I felt something I can only call freedom.

I did not answer it.

Some people learn the worth of a thing only after they have burned it to the ground, and by then the answer they are looking for is not one you owe them.

Answering would have meant giving Flynn a place, however small, in a life he had done everything in his power to destroy, and I was done handing him things he had not earned.

I had spent six years doing that.