“I thought I could keep my mother calm and handle the rest later,” he said.

He did not call that a misunderstanding.

He described it as his decision.

Hearing him say it in a room where I could not coach or correct him mattered more than hearing it at the sink.

Not because public words were automatically more honest, but because he had finally stopped choosing them for the immediate purpose of persuading me to let something go.

When it was my turn, I answered questions about the authorization, the disputed pages, and the incident.