He got into his car and he began to drive. And panic overtook him. A strange, clawing panic he had not felt since he was a child.

And this, he realized was what was underneath the guilt all along. This, he realized was the real thing that drove him.

Fear.

Because you could be a child who had been getting ice cream one moment but was snatched off the streets the next. A child who watched early-morning cartoons with your sister, and then one day she was gone and you never saw her again. And they said it was your fault. Your fault.

A curve came up quicker than he expected and he swerved, his car spinning out and nearly going into a ditch. And he sat there in the middle of the road, clutching the steering wheel, his heart beating hard.

And he realized. He realized.

He would live with this fear for the rest of his life. And keeping her on an island wouldn’t solve it.

And she was... She was brave enough to love him. She was brave enough, and she was... Brave enough to raise the children in a way that he never could.

The answer was not to keep her locked away tightly.

The answer was to let her go.