I didn’t say anything for a minute because the ocean was loud and because my father has always spoken truest when he is staring at something bigger than himself.
After a while I said, “You always deserved peace.”
He shook his head slightly. “Maybe. But some people live so long without it they stop knowing how to defend it.”
That sentence has stayed with me more than almost anything else from that year.
Because he was right.
My parents didn’t lose the house because they were weak or foolish or careless. They nearly lost it because they were decent enough to believe love and blood still meant safety. Daniel did what opportunists always do: he mistook decency for access. Claire did what frightened people too often do: she confused loyalty to her marriage with moral surrender and kept stepping over lines because going back would have required looking at herself.
And me?