What the Bread Was For

Junia had loaded the gun, but the trigger had been pulled, over and over, by Desmond’s own preference for a comfortable lie.

And Everett — this careful, unhurried old man who had spent four years trying to deliver a truth Desmond hadn’t wanted — was not going to let him launder his responsibility into victimhood now that the victimhood had become inconvenient.

The refusal was itself a kind of justice.

For four years Desmond had controlled the story, had decided who was guilty and who was wronged, had held all the power in the family and used it to crush the one person who’d loved him honestly.

Now, for the first time, he held none of it.

Whether he ever saw his wife or his daughter again was entirely, rightly, in the hands of the people he had harmed.