“I don’t need a lecture from my kid.”

“Then listen to your wife.

She said no.”

It was the second surprise Patty and I had arranged: not an ambush, not a crowd to humiliate him, just witnesses and the one person whose opinion Roger believed mattered more than mine.

But Roger still had one more mistake to make.

PART 6: The Locked Door

He lifted his suitcase and walked toward the door, passing me as though my words had been decorative.

I stepped aside rather than block his path.