And I have come to think that the difference between those two men — between Victor and Marcus — is the truest thing this whole story has to teach, larger than the crime, larger than the trial, larger than any of it.

Because Victor and Marcus were not simply a bad man and a good one.

They were two entirely opposite theories of what a person is for, and I had spent eight years living inside the wrong one without ever knowing there was another.

Victor’s theory was that every human interaction is a transaction, that kindness is a loan issued at interest, that no one ever gives anything except to create a debt they can later collect.

He believed this so completely that he could not even perceive an act of genuine, unpurchased goodness; when he encountered one, he assumed only that he had not yet found the angle.