He came to my room again that evening.
Without coffee this time, and without the deliberate preparedness that had characterized even his most unguarded moments in the months I had been inside this house. There is no preparation for what he had decided needed to be said, no way to arrange the words in advance so that they land with appropriate weight and appropriate distance. He sat in the chair by the window and I sat on the edge of the bed and the city moved indifferently outside the glass and he began.
"Your father was the most gifted systems architect I had encountered in twenty years of building this company," he said. "I want to be clear that I am not saying that to soften what comes after it or to honor him in a way that costs me nothing. I say it because it is technically accurate and because it is where everything else begins, and because he deserves to be named correctly before anything else is said about him."
He looked at his hands for a moment, then back up at me.
