“No one was going to believe that. After all the shit I’d already done? Even if I’d been a minor for some of it, and the rest was mostly petty crime. And I wasn’t even sure I believed it either, Em. I saw the way Abel looked when he came to my door that night. He needed help. And maybe Abel thought he needed a ride or money or whatever, but what he really needed was for someone to lean on. Someone to tell him things were going to be okay. And he came to me. I could have been that person, Emily. Instead of driving a desperate, drunk kid to the store to buy more beer, I could have invited him inside and given him some encouragement. But I was involved in my own stupid-ass plans, and I didn’t want to be bothered.” I’d done to Abel something pretty damn similar to what my father had done to me. I’d disregarded his pain because it’d been inconvenient. And yeah, I wasn’t the kid’s father, but he didn’t have one of those and I could have at least tried to steer him in a better direction, even if it meant not getting drunker that night instead of facing his fears. “I could have followed my gut and talked to him.”

“Oh, Tuck. All those could haves will do is torture you.”

“Good. Don’t I deserve that?”

“I don’t think so. But regardless of my opinion, you did your time. You paid the price that wasn’t even yours to pay.”

“There is no adequate price for that, Em. Not one set by a judge anyway. Abel’s kid is six years old now, and he doesn’t have a dad either. I’ll regret what I didn’t do that day forever.” That moment. The one where I failed. “And rightly so. I might have been the one to prevent his death, and I didn’t.”

“So you took the blame, not for him, because you couldn’t do that, but with him. You gave his girlfriend and son someone else to focus their anger on instead of only him.”

Her voicing that idea hit home even if I’d never exactly put it into words for myself. But yes, it’d brought me some kind of relief to know I could do something, no matter how small, in the aftermath of my mistake. But before I could comment, a voice came through what sounded like a bullhorn, announcing that the generator and lights were going to be shut off in twenty minutes. “I guess that’s a not-so-subtle hint to go to bed.”

I smiled. “I think you’re right.”

She studied me for a minute. “Thank you for telling me what happened.”