What Andrew had done was real; the grief was real, their mother’s death was real, Maria’s abandonment and Noah’s fatherless years were real, and none of it was erased by the fact that Andrew had acted out of fear.

A part of Daniel wanted, with total justification, to make his brother pay.

And he did not, and the reason he did not was something he had learned slowly over the terrible night and now understood completely: that punishment is only worth inflicting when it accomplishes something the situation actually needs, and that there is a kind of suffering so total it renders further punishment not just cruel but pointless.

Andrew had been in exile for six years.