After our son di3d, we adopted a little girl — one evening, she noticed a photo of him, stared at it, and suddenly said, “I know him. He told me not to forget him.”

And then he describes the young man sitting down on the grass.

Mr Innes reached them about ninety seconds later. He says that when he got there the young man was still talking to the child.

He does not record what was said. He was not asked.

What the police told us in 2022.

Everything, as far as they knew it, and nothing that mattered.

We were told there was a second vehicle. We were told the driver of the other vehicle had also died. We were told Silas was not at fault.

And I asked — in the family room at St Ida’s, at about two in the morning — whether anybody else had been involved.

And a police liaison officer called Faye said: “There was a child in the other car. She’s been taken to Harlan General and she’s not badly hurt.”

And I said — and I remember the exact words, and I have had to talk about them on Wednesdays for a year — I said: “Right.”