“I’m not.”
She squeezed my hand.
“But maybe understand what kind of person failed you.”
I waited.Chemistry
“He wasn’t some cruel man who enjoyed watching you wonder.”
Carol looked across the street.
“He was a frightened nineteen-year-old who came home when Thomas didn’t.”
Danny nodded slowly.
“And then he became a frightened twenty-three-year-old.”
Peter added:
“Then thirty.”
Carol looked at me.
“Then forty.”
I understood what she meant.
Fear had aged with him.
So had shame.
“That doesn’t excuse it.”
“No.”
Carol shook her head.
“But it explains why he kept trying to pay the debt in every way except the one Thomas actually asked.”
I looked at the gold ring.
Later that evening, after everyone left, I sat alone on the porch.
Walter’s house was dark except for one lamp in the front room.
I put the gold ring in my sweater pocket.
