Ethan studied him. “Are you sorry because you got caught or because you hurt us?”
That question came from my son who remembered everything.
Who lined up his toy cars by color and noticed if one was missing.
Who once asked me whether people can miss someone they never met.
Daniel looked at him for a long time.
“I don’t know how to answer in a way that makes it better.”
“You can answer true,” Ethan said.
Daniel’s throat moved.
“At first, today, I was sorry because I got caught. Then I saw you. All of you. And now I’m sorry because I don’t know how to survive knowing what I did.”
No one spoke.
That was the first honest thing he had said all day.
Not enough.
But honest.
Sophia closed her book completely.
“Mama survived it.”
Daniel looked at me.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “She did.”
