I declined to be erased, and I declined to lie, and the truth did the rest by simply being what it was.

There is a difference between those two things, and I have held onto it, because I did not want, even in the worst of it, to become a person who fought cruelty with cruelty.

I only refused to keep his secret for him.

“Yes,” I said, calmly, evenly, stating only what had happened.

“She was in the emergency room at Scripps Mercy two nights ago, with a fever of over a hundred and four.

She’s four months old.