“Forgive me, sweet boy.” And I stood there and understood, finally and fully, who the real Sebastian had been.

I remembered how carefully he had kept his distance when I was his brother’s wife.

I remembered that he had refused, at the cost of his life, to let a crime be swept quietly under the rug.

I remembered him climbing into that car with a folder on his knees, believing to the very end that his brother might still choose to do the right thing.

For three years we had all told ourselves that the survivor had simply been changed by his trauma, made quiet and gentle by grief.