I have thought about Dr.

Sato more than about almost anyone else in this story, because what she did was, on its face, so small, a locked door, a phone call, and it was, in fact, the hinge on which two lives turned.

And I have concluded that what she did that no one else had done was not, in the end, a matter of skill or of evidence.

She did not have more proof than the teachers had, or the counselors, or the neighbors who watched us grow quieter year by year.