We can go away, start fresh —”

I stood, adjusted my jacket, and looked down at him with a quiet, settled calm.

“You had five minutes, Conrad,” I said softly.

“And you let them pass.”

I watched the words land, and I watched him finally understand the phone call — weeks too late, in front of a board that had just voted him out of his own life.

Because that was what the five minutes had been, and he saw it now, all at once, the way a man sees the whole shape of a thing only after it has already closed over him.