That he would never again have to be the one who noticed, or the one who gathered proof, or the one who asked the hard question in the crowded room, because those were not the jobs of a child, and he had only ever taken them up because the grownup who should have been doing them had failed.

I told him he was allowed to put the whole heavy thing down now, all of it, and go back to being twelve, and that if there was any watching to be done from here on out, any protecting, it would be me doing it, and I would not fail him the way we had failed him.

He did not answer.

He had fallen asleep against my shoulder, worn out from the crying, worn out from months of carrying what he never should have had to lift.