I have spent six years thinking that if I’d just been on that boat — one more adult, one more pair of hands — maybe I could have done something.

Maybe they’d still be here.

How was I supposed to put that on you?”

“You don’t get to decide that,” I said.

“You don’t get to decide what I can carry.

You decided I was too weak for the truth, and you were wrong, and you stole six years of it from me.

I was not entirely fair to him, and I have made a kind of peace with that since, because fairness is hard to come by when a secret that size comes up out of the ground in your face.

He had not stolen the truth to protect himself.