He had been the one person in that family with the courage to look at his brother’s crime and refuse to bury it, the one who had drawn a line and held it, gently but immovably, and who had climbed into that car precisely because he still hoped his brother could be redeemed.

His death was not meaningless.

It was the death of a man on an errand of conscience, betrayed by the very person he was trying to save.

That is a harder grief than accident, but it is also, strangely, a prouder one.

The Sebastian I had never quite gotten to know had been, it turned out, the best of all of us.

Chapter 19 — Twins, But Not Their Fingerprints