"All bias and blame laid aside I couldn’t throw out that gold bar for the same reason I never really left that first ship or my time in the war, not in my mind anyway, or how I never stopped thinking about Ti and wondering how he had fared in life. I became a ghost stuck in the past, a restless, resentful spirit that drank and smoked and did or used anything I could get my hands on that would distract me and keep me away from the world. I was disheartened and upset when your mother took you and left but I wasn’t surprised."
"A vacant, mean part of me wondered why it took your mother so long to see what I already knew. What her father had seen from day one. I was a broken man, a malcontent, a petulant that had dared all and tasted the adventuring life, everything after that, no matter how comfortable or better, was a pale imitation by comparison. "
