"I'm sorry," Mrs. Abbott said quietly. "I shouldn't. I've no right to put this on you. You're a child."
"I'm eleven."
"That's what I said." But she smiled.
He put the photograph down very carefully, as if it might go off.
"What did he do?" Carter asked. "Your son. That his dad couldn't forgive."
She shook her head.
"Please," he said.
The first thunder rolled down off the mountains, long and low. She looked at the window, and then at the boxes, and then at him.
"He said no," she said. "Somebody told him he had to do something, and he said no. And his father had once said yes to the very same thing, and it nearly killed him, and he was proud of it. That's all I'll say." She stood up, a little stiffly. "Now. You'd better get home before this hits, or your mother will have my hide, and she doesn't even know I exist."
At the door she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Carter."
"Yes ma'am?"
"Whatever you find out," she said. "Whatever he tells you, or doesn't. You must not think less of him. You hear me? Whatever he did, he was very young, and he was very brave, and he was all alone, and that was our fault, not his."
* * *
"So she's your grandma," Danny Ruiz said.