I poured him scotch and called him son.” “He counted on us loving him,” I said.

“That’s the whole method, Dad.

It’s not that he was clever.

It’s that we were family, and family doesn’t audit the people it loves.

That’s not a failure in you.

That’s just where he knew to put the knife.” My father reached across the desk and took my hand, his grip still strong enough to remind me where I’d gotten mine, and for a while neither of us said anything at all.