He realizes as Peggy speaks that he needs to stop comparing her to the woman she'd become. She had, after all, been a woman at the end of her life, and he'd fallen into a pattern of respecting her grief rather than allowing himself to share in it — he wouldn't pretend he knew what it was like to live with it for all the years he'd missed. He doesn't have that excuse now, with her here. He supposes that's all it ever was, an excuse, even if he doesn't know what other choice he could've made. Laying it all on her was never an option. All he knows now is that he's still an idiot.

"You know I would've been there," he says quietly, all traces of a smile gone, never having really been there in the first place. He doesn't know if it's the right thing to say, just that it's the only thing. Besides, he'd rather have her angry at him than both of them pretending like he can't hear it in her voice.