“You couldn’t change the person Wyatt chose to be.

You did come when Piper needed someone.”

Gabriel nodded, but his eyes were wet.

He told me about a childhood moment I had never heard.

When he was ten, he had fallen from a bicycle and broken his wrist.

Their father had made him wait hours before seeking treatment because he believed boys should stop complaining.

Wyatt, then thirteen, had stood beside him but said nothing.

The family had treated that as discipline rather than neglect.