“What do you want?” he asks more gently.

“For Jack and Lily?”

“For you and me.”

With a mildly hysterical laugh, I lift a bewildered look to the drifting clouds. “Everything, nothing, time, memory, experience, talk—I don’t know.” Back at his face, I scowl. “How can we not know so much about the most important things in our lives?”

He should be as puzzled as me. The question is a cosmic one, and I’ve asked it rhetorically. But his eyes warm in the way of one who is older and wiser preparing to lecture. I’m thinking that I’m not ready for a lecture from this particular man, when I see empathy in that warmth.

“Because life isn’t static,” he says. “It keeps changing. We think we know where we are, then something happens and we’re somewhere else, and we have to find our way all over again. Sometimes, like with Jack’s mother, there just aren’t answers.”

Haven’t I just said the equivalent to Jack? I’m gratified to hear it from Paul. He is wise in ways I’ve always appreciated, and what he says makes too much sense to reject the words simply because of who he is. Besides, this doesn’t sound like a lecture or even advice. It sounds like a discussion.

“All those memories—” I recall frightening times with Tom, frustrating times with Mom, family times with Paul always on the sidelines, “—should they be ditched for being wrong?”

“Not ditched, just amended. And what about new ones?”

New ones, I think.

“You and I are both alive and well,” he says. “It’s an opportunity.”

Well, it was. But I say nothing. Truth is, Tom’s antipathy toward me notwithstanding, I feel traitorous declaring affinity for another father so soon. How can I simply negate a lifetime of memories in favor of new ones, even amended ones?

“This is sudden,” Paul acknowledges. “My timing stinks. I’m sorry.” He sits back. “Trust me, I didn’t plan this. But could I keep quiet after what Tina Aiello said? Of all the times I anticipated my confession,” he adds in self-derision, “the day of Tom’s funeral wasn’t one.”

“Would you have told me—ever—while he lived?”

He studies a distant point. “Probably not. Tom was one of my best friends, and still I hid this from him. I didn’t see that I had a choice. What good would it have done to tell him?” His eyes find mine again. “For what it’s worth, it never occurred to him to ask. He never dreamed it would be me, for which I feel all the more guilty, mind you. I never lied. But I did tell only half-truths. Like Tom with the police. Like so many of us. So, are we just taking the easy way out? Or are we choosing the lesser of the evils?”