I have thought since about how easy it is, and how common, to do what I did — to accept the comfortable version because the uncomfortable one would demand something of us that we do not want to give.

It is not only deployed soldiers who do this.

It is anyone who has ever chosen to believe a reassurance rather than verify a fact, because verifying would have been inconvenient, or frightening, or would have forced a confrontation we did not have the stomach for.

I told myself, for a year, that I was trusting my sister.

That is the flattering word for what I did.

But underneath the trust, if I am honest, was something less noble: relief.