Slate Advice Column: Bachelor Party Secret Tests Family Bonds

Somewhere between the celebration and the secret, a man finds himself bound to his brother-in-law by something neither of them chose to name. At a bachelor party — that ancient threshold between one life and the next — an incident occurred that both men agreed to bury, sealing it with the kind of pact made when consequences feel larger than truth. Now the writer carries that silence into a marriage, into a family, into every future gathering where the brother-in-law will sit across the table. He has come to an advice columnist not quite asking for permission to speak, but asking whether silenc