It took effort to say what came next.
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded.
Not dramatically.
Not with some perfect speech.
Just once.
That was enough.
Vanessa had gone ahead with Rachel, giving us space.
Daniel began walking again.
After a few steps he said, “For what it’s worth, I never wanted the companies.”
“You spent forty years complaining about how I ran them.”
“That is different.”
“How?”
“I wanted you to run them correctly.”
I laughed so hard I had to stop the wheelchair.
Daniel laughed too.
It felt familiar.
Painfully familiar.
Like finding an old photograph and realizing the people in it had not disappeared after all.
The weeks that followed were less dramatic than the hearing.
They were also more important.
My doctors adjusted two medications.
The mental fog did not vanish completely, but it improved.
Some mornings I was sharp.
Others required more patience.
I learned to use a digital schedule with reminders.
