He is serving two years of probation now, with mandatory parenting classes and anger management and child support taken straight from his wages, and he lives, I am told, in a small apartment on the other side of the city, learning the hard way what it costs a man to leave a child on a floor.

Yvette moved out of state entirely; she could not face our parents, or me, or herself.

I have not forgiven her, and I don’t know that I will.

But I will say this much for my sister: when the moment came, she chose the child over herself.

She handed over every scrap of evidence, told the whole ugly truth in writing, and in doing so she spared Roger from months of a vicious custody battle, from being interviewed and examined and fought over.

For that, and only that, I have let her go — into the past, where she belongs, without hatred, but without a way back.