He had turned into a reserved, polished version of the man I’d known all my life, and it was during those dinners that I saw him most clearly as others must have done: a handsome, tall, somber businessman of fifty-three, his hair not yet gray, leaning back in his chair, at ease with the world and his position in it. And I felt at these times a troubled wonder, the kind I imagine a parent feels for a grown child: pride, combined with the bittersweet notion that I had somehow, without noticing, without meaning to, lost him.
