“In the end,” he said, with a small, bitter, sad smile, “you didn’t leave me with nothing.”

“I never wanted to take anything from you, Solomon,” I said, and it was true.

“You left with everything that truly belonged to you.”

He looked at the floor for a long moment.

“That’s the hardest part,” he said quietly.

“I understand, at last, that almost everything I used to brag about owning was never really mine to begin with.” And I felt, hearing him say it, no petty satisfaction — only a small, quiet, complicated hope that a man capable of finally saying that sentence might, in time, become a better father to my son than he had been a husband to me.

It was not much.