He put a hand up about ten minutes in and said: “Marcus.

Stop.

You’re doing a thing where you’re the one with the problem and I’m the solution to it.

I had a mother and a childhood and a life and none of it was a wound waiting for you.”

He has my father’s hands.

Not the face — the hands, exactly, the flat nail beds, and I sat in a diner looking at a stranger’s hands on a table.

We have a thing now and it is small and slow and entirely on his terms.