He looked at the screen, and he broke, and then — while still broken, while still sobbing — he stood up and chose his wife and his daughter, cleanly, completely, without a backward glance.

Some men, faced with proof of their mother’s monstrousness, would have found a way not to see it, because seeing it costs too much.

Darius saw it.

He paid the cost right there at the kitchen table, all at once, and then he got in the car and drove into a mountain storm to save the family his mother was trying to destroy.

A person’s character is not what they feel in a crisis; everyone feels terror and grief.

It is what they do, and what Darius did, in the worst moment of his life, was choose correctly and never waver.