What we all got wrong.

For the first time, the shape of the thing changed.

It stopped feeling like a scheme run by a single enemy and started feeling like a chain of ordinary human choices — fear, assumption, family expectation, people deciding what other people could handle.

People guarding secrets in the name of protection until the protection did the damage.

Outside, light snow had started falling and melting the instant it touched the pavement.

We walked several blocks without speaking.