It was the same instinct that had let him sign the decree — the reaching for the easy exit, the outsourcing of the hard interior work to whoever would take it off his hands.

For eight years I had been the one who took it off his hands.

Elke had understood that vacancy in him and filled it with a lie.

And now, in his ruin, he was looking at me to fill it again, to tell him what to do, as though I were still his to lean on.

I was not.

That was the whole answer, and I gave it to him with my silence: there was nothing for me to tell him.

Whatever came next for Rhett Lockridge, he was going to have to find it the way the rest of us find things, alone, in the dark, without anyone to hand him the map.