Children, it turns out, are often quicker to forgive the adults who love them than those adults are to forgive themselves.

The trial came seven months later.

In the filings it was styled The State of Texas v.

Dario Prieto, four flat words that somehow held everything.

Dario’s expensive lawyers argued that he had only meant to give an anxious wife a mild sedative, but the state’s medical experts dismantled that in an afternoon: the amount recovered from the mug had no sedative purpose.

It had only one purpose.