“No problems?” he said.

“No,” I told him, and blurted out, “It was wonderful.” And seeing the pain on his face and thinking I could help I added, “Thank you, Dad.”

Harry closed his eyes again and turned his head away. For six or seven breaths, he stayed like that, and then, so softly I almost 229

couldn't hear him, he said, “What have I done ... Oh, Jesus, what have I done ...”

“Dad?” I said. I could not remember that he had ever spoken like this, saying bad words and sounding so very anguished and uncertain, and it was very unsettling and absolutely took the edge off my euphoria. And he just shook his head, eyes closed and would say nothing more.

“Dad ...?” I said again.

But he said nothing, just shook his head a few more painful times and then lay there quietly, for what seemed to me like a very long time, until at last he opened his eyes and looked at me, and there it was, that dead-eyed blue gaze that had moved beyond all hope and light and into the darkest place there is. “You are,” he said, “what I have made you.”

“Yes,” I said, and I would have thanked him again, but he spoke.

“It's not your fault,” he said, “it's mine,” and I did not know then what he meant by that, although these many years later I think I have begun to understand. I still wish I could have done or said something then, some small thing that would have made it easier for Harry to slide happily into the final dark; some carefully crafted sentence that made the self-doubt go away and let the sunlight back into those empty blue eyes.

But I also know, these many years later, that there is no such sentence, not in any language I know. Dexter is what Dexter must be, always and evermore, world without end, and if Harry saw that at the end and felt a final surge of horror and guilt —well, I really am sorry, but what else is there? Dying makes everyone weaker, subject to painful insight, and not always insight into any kind of special truth —it's just the approaching end that makes people want to believe they are seeing something in the line of a great revelation.

Believe me, I am very much an expert in what dying people do. If I were to catalog all the strange things that my Special Friends have said to me as I helped them over the edge it would make a very interesting book.

So, I felt bad about Harry. But as a young and awkward geek of a monster there was very little I could have said to make it easier on him.