I’m not the most empathetic person. When I was a kid, I saw The Lion King at a sleepover at Fiona Gorchinsky’s house. At the part when Mufasa dies and Simba tries to wake him up, every other eight-year-old was teary-eyed, and Fiona was straight-up sobbing. “He’s dead,” I said to Simba on the TV screen. “Get over it, kid.” Fiona Gorchinsky never invited me back to her house again. The point is, I understand other people’s emotions—most of the time other people are easy to figure out—but I don’t always feel moved by what other people feel. So when other people emote, I don’t always react appropriately.

Looking straight into Finn’s gaze, though, almost knocks me to the floor. His anger and hatred blast out of him like heat from the sun. If someone more emotionally sensitive were taking the full brunt of this, they’d implode and melt like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. As it is, I’m astonished by the depth of Finn’s hate. This must be what it feels like to stare into a black hole, a void that won’t let even light escape.

Then Finn blinks slowly, like shuttering a window. His hands relax on the armrests and he leans back into his chair, his grin reduced to a half-smile, his eyes clear and a bit sad. But this time I see the mask for what it is.

“Sorry,” he says. “I talk about Iraq too much, I get pissed off.” He takes in a deep breath and blows it out, a cleansing.

After a moment Ethan speaks, his voice thick and slow—he must have felt it too. “What happened to the money?”

Finn nods encouragingly, a teacher pleased with a student. “That, Ethan, is the question. What happened to the money?” He picks up his water bottle and examines it as if seeing it for the first time, then takes the cap back off. “Your father’s unit got reassigned to help with Vigilant Resolve. That’s what they called the op to pacify Fallujah. A week later, we called a cease-fire. By the end of the month, we pulled out of Fallujah. Marines had to go back in by the end of the year. Anyway.” He takes another sip, draining the bottle, then places it back on the coffee table. “While Jimmy was in Fallujah, I scored more convoy security. One day the Bradley I was in hit an IED. Nobody died, but I got a nice gash in my head and shrapnel in my leg and got airlifted to the military hospital in Balad. By the time I got back to Baghdad, your dad had gone home on leave. The money was still in that empty sewer pipe, though. Jimmy hadn’t taken it. But I didn’t know how to sneak ten million in cash out of the country.”