I watched that sentence do its work on Malcolm’s face, and it was a strange thing to witness.

He was a retired principal, a man who had spent his whole career telling children that honesty mattered and that the truth held together where lies came apart, and I could see the profession in him try to reject what he was hearing even as the evidence sat in his own hand.

Because the badge was not the kind of lie you could argue with.

It was not my word against Roland’s.