That the shame was not his.

That it belonged entirely to the two people downstairs, and that I was going to make sure, with everything I was and everything I knew how to do, that it got returned to them in full.

He told me that when he asked about his own bank accounts, there were consequences.

That when he refused to sign the papers they kept putting in front of him, there were consequences.

That Chloe had a particular cruelty and Julian had a particular coldness and that between the two of them they had made his own home into a place where he was punished for wanting to know what had happened to the life he’d worked eighty years to build.