It had been, from the very beginning, in its clumsy and frightened and deeply human way, a shield around it.

I know that not everyone would see it as I do, and I have thought hard about whether I am simply making excuses for a man I love, whether a lie is a lie regardless of its motive, whether the years of not-telling were a wrong I have too quickly forgiven.

And I do not want to be naive about it.

There is a real cost to a secret like Luca’s, even a loving one.