That night gave it to me, at a price I would never have chosen to pay, and I have carried it ever since like a blade I hope never to need again., as I understood that the person who had done this to my son, the person who had made a hurt nine-year-old cry silently so that no one would hear, was not a stranger.

It was the boy’s own grandfather.

Chapter 7 — He Threw Me Out

“And then what happened?” I asked.

I almost did not want the answer.

Some part of me already knew it and was bracing against it, the way you brace against a blow you can see coming and cannot stop.

“He threw me out,” Lucas said.

For a moment I genuinely thought I had misheard him, that the words had come out wrong, that surely no adult, no grandfather, no human being would do the thing those words described on a night like that one.