He was not guilty of anything.

He had not harmed anyone, betrayed anyone, done a single thing a decent person would call wrong.

His entire unbearable crime, in his own mind, was that he had allowed himself to be happy in my house, to belong, to call me Mom — and that in doing so he believed he had failed his sister, chosen a new family over the one person he had sworn in his heart never to leave.

He was drowning in guilt for the offense of having been loved and having loved back, which is no offense at all, which is the thing we are all here to do, and which he had been taught, by a life of being given away, to experience as a betrayal.