She glanced up at him. He was as inscrutable as ever, but he didn’t try to interrupt, so she continued.

“When I was younger, I tried to imagine what sort of people my parents might be. And I wanted to believe they were just human. A little selfish. A little stubborn. Flawed but no worse than most of us. But now I’m starting to think I was wrong. How do you cope with knowing your family might have been a part of something truly horrific?” She glanced aside. “Not just Mom and Dad, but…Ephraim. I keep trying to think of him as someone I’m not connected to. Someone I can look at from a distance and judge. But…he’s my ancestor. This is what I’m built from. Every generation until me, including me, has benefited from what he did back then. And there’s nothing I can do to escape it.”

Kant breathed in slowly, held it for a moment, then let it out in a lingering sigh. Together, they watched a pair of birds fly overhead, darting and diving as they made their way to the next patch of trees.

“Some people believe you can’t escape what’s in your blood,” Kant said at last. “That evil lives on in our genes or something of the sort. But I don’t think we’re shackled like that. We can change our legacy when we put good into the world to replace the bad. Sometimes it takes a lot of work. More than you, personally, should have been responsible for. But it can be done.”

Margot’s throat felt too full for her to speak, so she only nodded, dragging one of her sneakers through the dirt to form lines in the sand.

Kant scratched around the edge of the patch over his eye. His voice dropped lower. “For what it’s worth, your parents weren’t bad people. They were what you said. A little selfish. A little stubborn. They inherited a problem bigger than either of them knew how to deal with. If they were guilty of any crime, it was of just going on as they were. They never tried to fix any of it.” A glance. “You might be able to, though.”

The door behind them clattered as Nora forced it open. She held the journal reverently as she approached Margot. “I’ve scanned everything in there. The final pages are up on our site and on social media. I’m going to start work on the transcription now and add that as soon as I can.”

“That’s perfect. How long do you think the transcription will take?”

“Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes. It’s not long.”

Margot glanced toward the horizon. The sun was getting low, but they still had time. “Do that, then go straight back to Ray. You should get indoors before the sun sets and stay there until dawn.”