I could not undo what had been done to her that night.

But I could get to that belief before it set, while it was still soft, and pour the truth over it, immediately, in the first hour: you did nothing wrong, this was not your fault, there was never a prize, and love was never something you had to earn by being silent in the dark.

I said it on the shoulder of that road.

I have been saying it, in a hundred different ways, every day since.