And the target of that terrible pointing arm: a small, gentle, church-going grandmother, clutching a warm loaf of banana bread she had baked as a thank-you, her face just beginning to shift from cheerful confusion into the dawning realization that something had gone very wrong.

It is the single most absurd tableau I have ever been part of, and I was not performing it for effect; I could not speak, could not do anything but point, my whole body locked up with the enormity of what I believed I had uncovered.

The banana bread is what makes the memory unbearable to me now.

If she had come up the stairs empty-handed I could almost forgive myself.

But she came bearing a gift, climbing toward my accusation with a thank-you in her hands, and I pointed her at a pile of flour as though it were a corpse.