I did not enjoy her tears, and I want to be clear that I felt no pleasure in her comedown, then or later.

But I had finally understood the difference between rescuing a person and enabling one, and I had spent three years doing the second while calling it the first.

To keep paying for Bristol’s fantasy would have been the easy, cowardly, falsely kind thing.

To stop was the harder kindness, the one that actually served her, even as she wept on a heap of luggage and cursed my name.

The lead officer pointed toward the gate.

“Ten minutes,” he said.