Page 104 of Don't Tell

I take a breath.

"I'm sorry, Adrian."

He looks at me.

"Not for the acquisition. The acquisition was necessary. For the silence. The silence cost you seven years. It cost you this. The man you have been imagining is not the man I am, and I let you imagine him because telling you the truth meant trusting you to hear it. You were twenty-three. I was twenty-three. I made a coward's choice."

I stop.

He has not spoken the entire time.

His face has been doing the work of a man reading a history he thought he had memorized and finding the chapters in a different order.

Suzanne speaks.

She does it without looking at me.

"Adrian."

He turns.

"During the meetings. The three weeks of meetings. I saw a man who cared about artists. I saw someone with real taste. Real patience. The portfolio you walked me through wasn't only the long game. You were also doing real work."

He is quiet.

"Your grief is real. The firm you have built — the four artists you have placed carefully, the patience of the year — that is real. So was the long game. So is what your father became. The man your father was when you were eight is not the same man as the man he was when he died, and both of those men are yours to carry, and you get to decide what to do with them."

She breathes out.

"I'm sorry for what you lost."

His face does something he does not try to hide.

He does not speak.

He looks down at the folder, at the closed cover, and at the pen I have left on the table. His gaze moves to the small framed print on the wall above my shoulder.

He breathes out. "I need time."

"Of course."

"I will not make any public move. I — I would not know what move to make."

He gives a small almost-smile. The first honest thing his face has done in this room.

He stands and shakes my hand.

He holds Suzanne's hand for a beat longer than mine.

"I'm glad I met you. Even like this."

"You too, Adrian."

He leaves.

The door closes behind him.

The lounge is quiet.