I did not hate him, sitting there.

I had expected to, and I did not.

What I felt, looking at Bennet Marchand in that deposition room, was something closer to a vast and final grief — the grief of a son realizing that the father he had spent thirty years trying to please had been, the whole time, an empty suit arranging other empty suits, and that there had never been anyone home to please at all.

Chapter 29 — The Annulment

Our marriage was formally annulled six weeks after the airport.

Isabela and I met one last time at her attorney’s office downtown to sign the annulment decrees and the separation agreements.