While he was there, my dad and I had a great talk on the phone. We came to a kind of peace with each other. I asked him why he’d been so hard on me. “I was hard on you, Leslie,” he said, “but look where you are now. I’ve never had to take care of you. I’ve never had to bail you out of jail like your brother. I’ve never had to save your life. You saved your own life. Everything that I wanted you to become, you became. But your brother, he was another thing. We got tired, Leslie—tired of raising him. I wish we didn’t. But you? You are your own person. I love you.”
