That he was good.

That he had done nothing wrong.

That the failure had been entirely the adults’ and never for one instant his.

Children who are wronged this way often carry, absurdly and heartbreakingly, a secret conviction that they must somehow have deserved it, that if the adults they loved treated them this way, there must be something in them that warranted it.

I was determined that this conviction would find no soil in my son.