What strikes me, looking back, is how completely lawful it all was, how little it resembled the revenge such a moment might have invited.

Arthur had them dead to rights; he could have simply handed the whole file to the authorities and watched them dragged away, and no one would have blamed him.

Instead he offered them a door.

Sign the waiver, keep your mother’s legacy, and go.

It was not softness, and it was not forgiveness; he had no illusions left about his children.

It was something colder and wiser than either.