Sam said, "Buddy, I didn't think —" I held up a hand. I said, "Don't. Not yet." And then I looked at Ben. Ben was sitting to my right. He was, as I had mentioned, the one friend of the four I had actually kept in touch with during the eighteen-month drift. He looked at me and his face did a thing I will not forget — it went from waiting to hear my accusation, to realizing, in real

time, that maybe there was no accusation coming for him. I said, "Ben. You're the reason I still have one friend from this group. I don't have a paragraph for you. I have a sentence. Thank you for being the only one of these four people who never, in twenty years, did anything to me that I had to carry around in my wallet. I'm sorry I let you think I was also drifting from you. I wasn't. I was just — I was trying to figure out whether I had the courage to do this tonight, and I didn't want to talk about it with you until I did." Ben's eyes went wet. He reached over and he put his hand on my shoulder. He did not say anything.