I could have taken Solomon’s son from him inside of a year, not by breaking any law, but simply by letting my anger leak into my parenting, the way anger always wants to.\n\nAnd I did not do it, and the reason I did not do it is the whole of what separates a parent from a person using a parent’s power.

Because a child is not a weapon, and the moment you use one as a weapon, the wound you inflict does not land on your enemy.

It lands on the child.

Every drop of poison I might have fed Theo about his father would have entered Theo, not Solomon — would have taught my son that his own father was a monster, that half of where he came from was rotten, that his love for his dad was a foolishness to be ashamed of.

That is not vengeance against Solomon.