Instead, the hidden truth had grown into this: a public humiliation, a sister’s betrayal, an eleven-million-dollar fraud, a prison sentence, a ruined man in a rented room.

That is what secrets do when you keep them out of kindness.

They spare no one the pain; they only defer it, at interest, until the bill that arrives is one no one can pay.

Evelyn had tried to protect her son from a small wound, and in doing so had guaranteed him a mortal one.

I had helped her.

And standing in that hallway with the laboratory’s message still warm in my pocket, I made a promise to myself that I have kept ever since: that I was finished, forever, protecting anyone from the truth.