It was the cruelest patience I have ever practiced, letting my good father grieve a fiction for a few minutes longer, and I did it because I knew that the only thing worse than his grief now would be his doubt later — that if I pulled him out too soon, with only my word, my mother would find a way to turn it into hysteria, and my father, who wanted so badly to keep believing in her, might let her.

He needed to see it.

He needed to hear it in her own voice on the recording.

So I let him kneel, and I hated every second of it, and I understood that protecting the people you love sometimes means letting them stay in the dark one minute longer so that when the light comes, it cannot be argued away.

Then Fairbank came back in with his clipboard and raised his voice to the room, grave and careful, announcing that the team was prepped and only needed payment cleared before they could take her back.