It’s an efficient lie, because it makes you stop looking, or look with less hope, which comes to the same thing.

Ruby had believed I’d forgotten her.

Silas had believed it enough that six years of Navy database searches felt like shouting into a well.

And I had believed it most of all, being the oldest, the one who was supposed to have protected them and hadn’t.

It took a government audit and a computer cross-referencing old files to undo in an afternoon what twenty years of separation had built.

Four people, each convinced they were alone in their loyalty, and all four of us had been loyal the whole time.