That is the closest thing to a verdict I have ever been given.

Not from a court, not from a hospital, not from a lawyer.

From a woman in a folding chair in a basement on Mineral Point Road whose own son lived six days.

I corrected it with the other eleven too.

One at a time, in person where I could, over about five months.

Three of them cried.

Two of them were angry — not at me — in a way I found difficult to be in a room with.

My father did not know what to do with it at all and has still not really said anything about it, which is my father.