Panic does not calmly exchange wallets and wedding rings and rehearse a new identity.

The swap was thought.

It was a man, in the worst moment of his life, choosing coldly and well for himself and catastrophically for everyone else.

That is the thing I will never be able to forgive, and the thing I have stopped trying to explain.

Chapter 23 — The Wrong Coffin

When I understood it, when the detective had finished and I sat holding those two folders, what undid me was not only the death.

It was the three years that came after it, the long, patient, unforgivable performance.