Topher stared at the buffet, angry at first, but then softening.
“Look, I’m sorry. For snapping at you. Both of you.” He looked each in the eye. “It’s this place, these things, all of this.” He made a broad gesture around him. “The truth is that I feel responsible for us being here. It was my idea, my plan. I didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did.”
He stopped. It was as close as he would ever get to an apology, and he knew it, and Zorn and Gertrude knew it. He couldn’t apologize. There were no apologies for what they did. It just was. And it would hang between them for the rest of their lives. The only way to move past it was to forget it, but they could never forget it. So he said, “Would you like to see what I’ve done?”
“Yes,” Zorn and Gertrude said simultaneously, relieved.
Zorn
