I had learned to live without turning every unanswered question into an emergency.

Wyatt and Austin came over that evening.

Elaine and Peter joined us, carrying a cake from the bakery where we’d bought birthday desserts for years.

The icing simply read: To the truth.

“It’s a little dramatic,” Peter said, setting it down.

“It’s perfect,” I told him.

We didn’t toast to justice as if a piece of paper had made everything right.

We talked about what it meant for a person to be believed, and about the strange way two families had been bound together long before anyone knew the reason.