He was not having that conversation with Brian in order to find out the truth.

He already had the truth.

He had sat in a consultation room in the sixth year and been told what the problem was and whose it was, and he had a ring binder with tabs in his own handwriting.

He went to Brian’s house because Brian was the only person in the world who could give him permission to stop believing his mother.

That is what he meant by an answer he could trust, and he said so later in that room in almost exactly those words, and at the time I heard it as an insult to me and it was not quite that.