Leo had offered to kill three people not because he wanted to, but because he loved my daughter and he loved me, and because he possessed a terrible capability, and he was willing — as he had always been willing, as all of us had once been willing for each other — to spend his own soul to spare the people he loved a greater pain.

That is a kind of love, however monstrous its expression.

It is the love of a man who says: let me be the one who does the dark thing, so that you don’t have to; let me damn myself, quietly, so that you can stay clean.

And when I told him no — when I refused his offer — I was not only refusing to have three young men killed.

I was refusing to let Leo damn himself on my family’s behalf.