“You used what I might do to keep him away.”
“Yes.”
The answer came without apology.
I stepped closer. “You keep making promises sound like handcuffs. He wanted to come home.”
“Yes.”
“And you reminded him why he shouldn’t.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Wade’s face hardened, and suddenly I saw the man Randall must have known for fifty years, the boy who had fought beside him, the young man who had probably dragged him out of bars and bad decisions, the friend who knew exactly which truth would hurt enough to matter.
“Because he was dying,” Wade said. “And dying people get scared. They change their minds. They beg for things they refused yesterday. He asked me to be the one person who remembered the promise when he couldn’t.”
“To protect me.”
“To protect the choice he’d already made.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.” His voice dropped. “It isn’t.”
