Not all at once, and not because they were evil.

One small, self-protecting refusal to look, repeated until it became a life.

Chapter 16 — So You Did Believe Me

Every time Irene had mentioned her pain over those weeks, Mark said, he had felt his whole careful structure of lies shift and slip beneath him, and instead of steadying it by telling the truth, he had steadied it by silencing her.

His panic had turned, again and again, into anger pointed at his own child.