“It was an activation.”

“It was an activation,” my father said. “I built it eleven years ago and I kept it current, and I got word to the right places to make sure you’d open it in the week you finally left him.

It’s the cleanest piece of work I’ve ever done and I’d like never to think about it again.”

The tide was going out. You could smell it.

“Do you want me to say I’m sorry?” he said. “I will. I’ll say it as many times as you want and I’ll mean every one of them and it will not be worth anything, because I would like to be honest with you for once in your life — if I were fifty-nine years old and sitting in that helicopter hangar again with ninety minutes, knowing everything I know now, I don’t know that I’d do it differently.

I’ve tried to get to that answer for eleven years and I can’t.”