I have been asked whether I regret saying it so plainly to him — whether, given everything, I might have offered the man some softer version of the truth, some exit that let him keep a shred of the story in which he was merely weak rather than wicked.

I do not regret it, and I have thought about why.

It is because the softer version was itself part of the machinery of the harm.

For sixteen years, Arthur had done wrong things and been permitted to call them mistakes — small, understandable, human errors, the kind anyone might make, deserving of patience and another chance.

His mother called his cruelties stress.

His father called his failures youth.