“I said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ She looked at me for a moment and then she did something I’ll never forget. She said, ‘I forgive you.’ ” Nicholas’s eyes welled up. “The power of those words. I fell back to my knees and wept. Olivia was almost the same age I was when I took her parents and sister from her. I don’t know how she did it. But she knelt down next to me and held me. She said, ‘You were just a kid, like me. Sometimes we do dumb things. Sometimes there are consequences.’ ” Nicholas shook his head. “I don’t know how she found the strength to say that to the man who had killed her parents.”

“What happened after the accident?” I asked.

“I was arrested. I was put in youth corrections for nineteen months—until my eighteenth birthday. It would have been longer—much longer—but because I was underage and it was my first offense, the judge ruled that I would be tried as an adolescent. A lot of people wanted me tried as an adult. Some of those people were waiting outside the juvie center with placards when I got out. They stood there and jeered at me. One called me a murderer. One had a drawing of a headstone with the word justice. I’ll never forget a woman shaking a finger at me and saying, ‘Rot in hell.’ ”

“I understand,” I said.

He slowly nodded. “I know you do. You also understand that even though the law was done with me, my punishment had just begun. I carried the weight of what I’d done every day of my life. My relationship with my parents changed. My trial and fines had just about bankrupted them.

“My mother was severely depressed. She was very religious and she blamed herself for what had happened. She felt like God was punishing her for being a bad mother. She became addicted to prescription medications. My dad tried to keep things together, but eventually it was too much for him too. My parents divorced. My brother and sister blamed me for destroying the family. I can’t blame them; it’s true. But since then I’ve been alone. None of them will talk to me. I’m dead to them. My mother died of an overdose six years ago.

“It’s been a long road. It seemed like anytime I started to feel happiness, the memory of the Hayeses’ deaths or my mother’s death would rise up to smack me back down. Something would say to me, ‘How can you be happy when they’re in the ground?’ I’ve wondered if God could ever forgive me.