The mind protects itself from unbearable knowledge with a thousand small, reasonable lies, and I told myself every one of them.

But the voice would not stop.

And somewhere in that second month, a colder, clearer part of me — the part, I think, that had spent years as an auditor learning to trust a discrepancy over a comfortable story — quietly decided something.

It decided that the next time, I was not going to explain anything away.

The next time, I was going to find out.

Chapter 4 — The Trap