“James felt as he always felt waiting to deliver this kind of news: like an emotional mugger, smashing into other people’s calm lives, leaving agony and loss behind. The aloofness of his role built his guilt, his distance from their pain. That he could introduce himself to people to deliver news that ruined them, with no wounds of his own to show in solidarity. He was the professional, like a doctor, slicing through their existence then going back to his own clean life.”
