man who never quite let anyone fully in, who held a piece of himself back in every relationship and every conversation, who smiled warmly at people while maintaining a distance they could sense but not name.
The boys noticed it.
As they got older, they noticed the way Walter would shut down certain conversations, anything that touched too close to that first December, anything about their mother, anything about the authorities.
They attributed it to his private nature, to his past, to the ordinary walls that adults build around themselves.
