It had come from fear allowed to run unchecked, from a secret that had grown large enough to require sacrifices, and from the oldest and most ordinary calculation in the world: that the cost of being found out felt, in the moment, larger than the cost of what he was doing to keep from being found out.

He had told himself a story in which he was still a good father who was managing a hard season.

And each day that story required a little more silence from Irene to stay believable, and so each day he had taken a little more of it, and had not let himself look squarely at the price, because looking squarely at the price would have meant seeing himself.

That, Martha understood, was how decent people did terrible things.