Because it revealed the thing at the center of him, the thing six years of marriage had hidden from me: that to Luke, family did not mean the people.

It meant the structure.

The name, the reputation, the house, the standing, the smooth unbroken surface of the life.

He was not protecting his wife, or his daughter, or any actual human being — he was, at that moment, willing to trade the truth of a dead child and the sanity of his living wife to protect the appearance of a family, the brand of it, the thing that could be photographed and printed in a firm’s brochure.

He would burn every real thing a family is made of to preserve the shell it is displayed in.

And he would call that protection, and mean it, and never once see the monstrousness of it, because in his world the shell had always been the point and the people had always been the staff.