“It was the best thing that could have happened,” I told him, and he seemed satisfied by that, and closed his eyes, and I switched off the light.

Someday, when he is old enough to understand it, I will tell Noah the whole of what he did — not to burden him with it, but because he should know.

I will tell him that at three years old, in a suit too big for him, he did the thing that a building full of adults could not: he told a hard truth to a person who did not want to hear it.

I will tell him that courage is not the absence of a trembling hand — his hand was trembling when he held out that little drive — but the willingness to hold the thing out anyway.