And then I said the one he had left out.

“You should never have helped drag me into that garage, Christopher.” He put his head down, and wept onto the table, and said he would regret it for the rest of his life.

And I found that I had nothing left to say to him, and did not need his regret, because whatever became of Christopher from that day forward had finally, completely, stopped being any concern of mine.

I have noticed that people expect that final meeting to have been cathartic — that I must have wanted to say something devastating, to make him understand the full weight of what he had done, to leave him with words he would carry forever.

I wanted none of that, and its absence surprised me.

Because wanting to devastate him would have meant I still needed something from him, still cared what lived inside his head, still had a thread running from my life to his that a good enough parting shot might satisfy.