“Being skilled at work doesn’t automatically make someone kind at home.

And making mistakes at home doesn’t mean every part of their work was wrong.

Those are different things.”

“Then how do you tell?”

“You look at what people do, whether they take responsibility when they’re wrong, and whether they change afterward.”

She wrote that down in her notebook.

She had begun treating difficult family questions the way I treated investigations: not as puzzles to win, but as things worth understanding carefully.

Ethan’s questions were harder because he seldom spoke them aloud.