" And then heard Detective Ryan’s pleased voice talking about Eli, about killers who’ve gone free: “They have to tell,” he’d said
Well, apparently so.
But why? What is it that comes from the telling?
Some of it must be relief, of course. A secret weighs on us, a terrible secret weighs with a terrible weight.

It seems as we need someone to know us as we are—with all we have done—and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone’s sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please
"

― Sue Miller , While I Was Gone