He had buried it to protect me, wrongly, arrogantly, out of a love that had curdled into six years of silent self-punishment.

But in the moment all I could feel was the theft of it — six years in which I might have known that my husband and sons died as rescuers and not as fools, six years of a question I could have been spared, kept from me by a man who had decided, without asking, what I was strong enough to hold.”

He flinched, and he did not defend himself, because there was no defense and we both knew it.

Chapter 21 — The Missing Vest