“I need to say something to you, Vivienne,” she said, and when I moved to intervene she raised her hand and stopped me.

“Let me finish, Callahan.”

And my mother confessed her own small share of the town’s larger sin.

“For those first three days, I thought the worst of you,” she said, her voice cracking.

“I believed you had humiliated my son in front of everyone.

I even caught myself thinking it would be better if you never came back.

And when Callahan carried you out of those woods, I still had doubts in my heart — I was more worried about what the neighbors would say than about what you had just suffered.

I cannot erase that shame.