My father swallowed, and fought the paralysis dragging at one side of his mouth, and worked, with an effort that cost him everything, to shape a single clear word.

“Daughter,” he said.

Lucy closed her eyes, and the tears came down her face at last, and she bent and rested her forehead against the back of his ruined hand and stayed there a long time.

Chapter 20 — The Shame Was Ours

A month after the trial ended, I gathered the extended family — the uncles and aunts and cousins and old family friends, the whole social world we had moved in — at the cabin.

I need to explain why, because it was not sentiment.