M. Gessen

We're at the point, that is, when there can be no denying that in the foreseeable future, Alan will leave prison and will almost certainly want to rejoin the family.

I don't think any of us really knows how to address that prospect.

And for weeks, I didn't know how to respond to Alan's email.

Then I finally figured out what I wanted to say to him.

I'm Em Gessen, and from Serial Productions and The New York Times, this is the fifth and final episode of The Idiot.

When I set out to report Alan's story, I wanted to understand what he had been thinking.

What the hell he had been thinking.

And I wanted to lay out a clear picture of the crime for my family so that they would stop looking for excuses or hoping for a reasonable explanation.

In the process, I got to know Alan, for the first time really, and I came to feel how much he's missing his kids.

He's waged a battle to be allowed phone calls with them.

He's hoping to rebuild a relationship with them once he's released.

And judging from his letters to me, he's not just hoping, but counting on being reintegrated into our family after he gets out.

Whether that happens is up to my dad.

He is the reason that our family is as elastic as it has been.

He is the one who has kept in touch and welcomed ex-partners and distant relatives who otherwise would have vanished from our familial horizon.

But it turned out that over the years when I grew somewhat more sympathetic to Alan, my father had traveled on the opposite trajectory in relationship to Alan and Nana too.

I think last time I talked to you, you were really sad about losing your sister.

I had never heard my dad say anything like this before.

It's not that he is sentimental, just the opposite.

He is clear-eyed and rational.