But mercy that has forgotten it is a choice is not mercy anymore.

It is just surrender wearing mercy’s face, and I wore that face for twelve years, and I will never wear it again.

Chapter 20 — I Stopped Protecting It

Samuel Ross mailed me one final thing, a few weeks after I moved to the house by the ocean: a last copy of the old fire report, the complete one, the true one, the document that had taken twelve years to surface.

I did not read it again.