"I never could really enjoy the teenage talk about curses and such when I'd come home in the summer. Because while I wasn't a curse breaker, and didn't know how to break them, I knew they existed, and, well..." She waved a hand towards the lake.
She sipped her wine, listening, aghast a bit at what he was saying, not so much because of any part of what Theodore might have done, but the story itself. No child should have to have lived through that, and there was a selfishness that lay underneath all of it, from the alcoholic rage, to the covering of it - particularly how it would have impacted Theodore's life. For a moment she was quiet, and she allowed the words to linger as she considered her response carefully.
"I think it's a choice that no seventeen-year-old boy should have to make," she finally decided upon. And I can't say that it won't adjust my opinion of you at all, but I think you needn't worry about that being a negative adjustment. That's a lot to carry, and if I were guessing I would say that you haven't done so lightly?"