The car ride was the mask finally coming off.

I would spend the years that followed making sure he never had to put it back on, that whatever else his childhood held, he would never again have to be the adult in the room.

The months after were audits and headlines and a long line of politicians and executives and investors pulled into the light as the whole enterprise came apart — Lachlan’s firm, that celebrated pillar, revealed as a machine for washing dirty money through projects that were never real.

He was sentenced to a long term, and I never once visited, because some doors have to be closed all the way for the healing to start.

Linus went to a counselor, and for weeks he woke in the night certain someone was coming for him, and I sat by his bed until his breathing evened out.

And slowly he came back to himself — soccer, and school, and video games, and, one afternoon, real laughter from the kitchen, at which I had to lean against the wall and cry from relief.