But I had learned that day that people are capable of more than they believe when the alternative is laid out plainly enough, and I laid it out plainly.

He wiped his face with the back of his hand, and he took a long breath, and some small portion of the terror in him made room for something else — a thin, exhausted thread of hope.

Hope is a dangerous thing to hand a desperate man, because false hope can get people killed, and I had weighed that before I said a word.

But I was not handing him false hope.