Better to build the file and let the truth outlive me. He had chosen to be the container for a poison rather than let it spread to his children while they were still too young to survive it.

I had spent my career admiring people who were brave in loud ways, under fire, in front of witnesses.

My father had been brave in the quietest way there is, alone, for years, with no one watching and no medal at the end of it, and I had not known the half of it until I read it in his own small handwriting.

In the wooden box was a USB drive, an old cassette, and a photograph of my father with my grandmother in front of the Beacon Hill brownstone.