“You know how sensitive she is.

You do this, and you break her heart.”

I looked at the brass front door handle in the afternoon sunlight twenty feet away.

I thought about Lauren sitting at her office desk in town right now, staring down at it, believing she had caused all of this by trusting her father.

I thought about the twenty-seven years I had spent keeping quiet in kitchens just like this one, taking the blame so nobody else had to feel uncomfortable.

“You can tell Lauren exactly why you’re in a cell, Mark,” I said.