So the plain, hard text was, in its way, the first genuinely respectful thing I had said to Jason in years.

It treated him as an adult who could bear the truth of his own life.

It was not cruelty.

It was the withdrawal of a cushioning he had never earned and had come to expect as his due, and its withdrawal was, though it did not feel like it to him, the most grown-up gift I could have given.

Chapter 13 — The Empty House

Their flight landed late on Saturday afternoon.