😮 I removed the handcuffs from a prisoner and recognized the tattoo of my dead father. He died in Vietnam three months before I was born; I never knew him. 💔 And this 67-year-old man, accused of stealing medicine from a pharmacy, had the same military badge on his arm that my mother has had framed in the living room for forty-eight years.

from her just to keep something for myself?

That afternoon I understood that there are lies that hold up entire houses. And that the one who breaks them doesn’t always do it out of love for the truth. Sometimes it’s out of hunger.

“Tell me what happened on that hill,” I said. “Everything. Recess is over, and I need to know who I’m about to defend.”

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