Something about sitting down to fight—a new concept to both of them—made the fighting productive. Things came up from decades ago. Cal told his father how awful it had been to grow up with a drunk. Everett accused Cal of being a whiner and a Puritan. It all seemed to boil down to Cal’s having moved out of the now nonexistent house on Compton Road when he was eighteen. Cal had felt like Everett had deliberately crowded him out over the years—choosing stuff over him. Everett had felt misunderstood and abandoned. There was no resolution because there was nothing, really, to resolve (neither of
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