“You turned yourself into bait for me.

There isn’t a bigger thing a person can do.” He shook his head against the pillow.

“I owe you the years I stayed quiet,” he said.

“The bait was just me finally doing the easy part.” I understood then that we were, the two of us, learning the same lesson from opposite ends of a life — that love which stays silent to keep the peace is not the same as love, and that the bravest thing either of us would ever do was simply refuse, at last, to look away.

Devon was sentenced to thirty-two years without parole.

Horace got sixteen.