The days after the confession were strange and tender. Mira had expected Samuel to pull away, to need space, to process the impossible information she had given him in the way that humans processed difficult things—by retreating, by thinking, by requiring silence. But he did not retreat. He leaned in. He asked questions—not interrogating questions, but curious ones, the questions of a person who wanted to understand rather than to judge. "What was it like?" he asked one evening, lying on his b...