I used to imagine, in the early months, that Arthur must feel some version of what I felt, that surely somewhere behind the cold executive there was a man who lay awake and knew what he had lost.

I do not imagine that anymore.

I think the most frightening thing about a man like Arthur is not that he suffers secretly.

It is that he does not.

He genuinely could not see it.

To the end, I believe, he thought he had simply lost a legal battle over some money, an irritating defeat handed to him by a scheming old woman and a lucky delivery driver.

He never grasped that the money was the least of what he had lost, that the real loss had happened years before any of this, quietly, every time he sent a check instead of himself.