I did neither.

“I hope you become the kind of man who never does it again,” I said.

“But that work is yours.”

He nodded slowly.

I walked out with Marcus, my coat over one arm, into an ordinary afternoon filled with car horns and people buying lunch.

Nothing in the city paused for us.

Strangely, that helped.

My pain was real, but it didn’t have to be the only thing in the world.