Then there were other nights when I would read another page of the journal and find some small detail that undid me—a note about buying a little girl purple rain boots because the red ones at the store made her cry, or a reminder to ask Helena whether she liked marigolds or only planted them because Patricia had once loved them—and the rage would soften into grief, and the grief into something more complicated than either.
George had kept me in the dark. That was true.
George had also spent years doing difficult, dangerous, beautiful work because he could not save his sister and refused to let that failure become his entire moral inheritance.
That was also true.
Human beings are most inconvenient when they are both blameworthy and worth honoring.