"I'm glad you made the appointment. I know I didn't act like it. I know I'm going to be mad about Sandusky for a long time, probably, and some of it's going to come out sideways, and I'm sorry ahead of time. But I'm glad." He looked at her. "Bastian was right. Nobody else was going to do it. I was never going to let anybody."
She did not say anything. But at the next light, she reached across the console without looking at him and put her hand on his knee, and left it there until they turned onto Birchmont.
The split-level was yellow, with a basketball hoop over the garage that had no net and a ramp built over the front steps out of pressure-treated lumber that looked new. Imre opened the door before they knocked. He was wearing the same gray hoodie. There was a faint mark on his collarbone, just visible at the neckline, the yellow-green of a bruise four days old, and Gerrit saw it, and Imre saw him see it, and neither of them looked away.
"Hey," Gerrit said.
"Hey."
"I'm sorry. For Tuesday. I'm not going to say it was the concussion. Maybe some of it was. I don't know. But it was my hands. It was me. I put you against those bleachers because I decided I already knew something I didn't, and I was wrong, and you didn't do anything to deserve it, and I'm sorry."
Imre considered him for a moment with that same slow attention. Then he said, "Okay," and then, after a pause, "Thank you," and then, "You want to come in? My brother's making pancakes."