And I stood at his graveside in the local cemetery and wept as though I were burying my own father, because in every way that actually counts, I was.

His son stood a few feet away from me at that graveside, dry-eyed, checking his watch.

I had met Justin perhaps a dozen times in eighteen years, and I had never once seen warmth in him.

He rarely visited.

He almost never called, except about money.

And on the rare occasions he did come to the house, he moved through it with the restless impatience of a man in a waiting room, eager to be gone.