Because David had knelt on the carpet and apologized, and I think the apology was even real, in the shallow way that Davids are capable of real.

But the police lights were barely through the curtains before he was already, instinctively, reaching past the truth for the damage control — if this gets out, my career, the family, there has to be another way. And in that instant I saw the whole man, clearly, for the first time.

Because a person’s true values are not what they say in calm moments; they are what they reach for in the first unguarded second of a crisis, before they have time to perform.

And what David reached for, in that first second, was not his wife’s vindication, not justice for Sarah Pruitt, not even simple horror at what his father was.