I was fortunate, more fortunate than I understood at the time, that the Vances were not that kind of family.

Arthur was a judge to his marrow, a man for whom the evidence was the evidence regardless of whose son it condemned.

Evelyn valued honor more than she valued the comfort of a lie, even a lie that would have spared her the shame of her own son’s disgrace.

And Marcus, gentle Marcus, chose the painful truth over the comfortable fiction, even though the truth cost him his marriage.

They chose rightly, all three of them, at real cost to themselves, and their choosing is the reason the story ended in justice rather than in my further isolation.