"Is he going to jail?" Nick asked. Straight at it, the way he goes at things that actually matter.
I didn't flinch.
"Probably," I said. "For a long time, most likely. The people whose job it is to decide that are still figuring it out. But based on what's already happened, yeah. I think he's going to be in jail for a big part of your childhood."
His face did something I didn't have a single word for. Not quite crying. Something underneath it, almost like relief mixed in there too , the strange, tangled feeling of losing a dad he loved while also, somewhere down deep, finally understanding why the last year had felt so scary and confusing.
"It's not your fault," I said. Before he could even ask, before the thought could fully form, because I'd learned the hard way, in my own childhood,
