Only now does his voice start to crack. 'I have always been a disappointment to myself, Arnold. We think we’re the sum of our parts, but we’re not. We don’t add up. Like in mathematics, just because you want the numbers to connect, it doesn’t mean they will – not if you’ve got the equation wrong.'
Julius tries to unbuckle his seatbelt, so he can turn to see the boy. But he’s stuck, held in place by the large white airbag and a shooting pain in his spine.
'Do you know what a happy number is, Arnold?' he continues, trying to keep calm. 'It’s a number where the iterated sums of the squares of the digits terminate at one. The sequence stops. The number reaches happiness. I think you’re my happy number, Arnold. I’ve stopped making the same mistakes over and over. I’ve stopped with you.'