[It often feels easy with Amelia, when he doesn't give himself leave to overthink things. He laughs warmly at her hypothetical agreement, and the next pull from his glass goes down just a bit easier as he finds himself more engaged with the present than the past— something he's beginning to feel with surprising regularity, lately.]

Oh, no doubt we would have been at odds, because it would have been anathema to me to allow anyone else to be in the right.

[An insufferable know-it-all to the end.]

In our best interests, I think, that we waited until now to cross paths.