It would have been so easy, and so justified, to let it.

They had seen it; they had drawn their conclusions; a single afternoon had shown them, more clearly than any speech of mine could, who Luca was.

And a wounded, vindicated part of me wanted to leave it there.

But I understood, watching them, that a child’s picture of a parent becomes, in some deep way, a picture of half of themselves, and that a child taught to despise their father is handed a poison they carry in their own blood.

So I made a different choice, and I held to it, even when it cost me.