And here he was in the flesh, and there was no hidden depth, no secret anguish, no tormented son buried inside the cold executive.

There was just the executive.

I remember thinking, in that moment, that I finally understood the arrangement I had been part of, understood it from the inside.

He had not hired me because he was too busy to visit, or too far away, or too wounded by some old family rupture to bear it.

He had hired me because visiting his mother was, to him, a task, and tasks are things you delegate to cheaper labor.

That was the whole of it.