A Courageous Utilitarian

I only want to do what is right

Verita was thirteen the first time she watched her father lie directly.

It wasn’t the kind of lie that breaks trust. I would’ve called it a softer, stranger act of love folded in dishonesty. A white lie, maybe, but with a smudge of grey.

They were driving home from the pharmacy, a late summer sun hanging low, through the peach-colored light and field of pinker flowers. The air smelled static, a sense of cover up ambience that felt both like the subtlety of home and the absence of it.

Her little sister Electa sat in the back seat, cheeks still pink from a fever, clutching a bag of cough syrup and a sticker shaped red lion.

“Daddy,” Electa yelled, “didn’t you say Mommy would be home tonight?”

With a glare, Verita looked up from the passenger seat. She already knew the answer. Her father didn’t answer right away. Instead, his fingers tapped once on the steering wheel. Then again. That was his tell.

He smiled, almost automatically. “Of course I did.”

I’ve heard their mother has been gone for years now. The disease had taken her when Electa was just a baby and Verita was still too young to understand fully. Since then, their father had carefully crafted a story for Electa, that Mommy was far away, working somewhere that kept her busy, sometimes missing special moments but always loving them from afar.

The lie was soft, a shield to protect Electa’s fragile heart. It wasn’t denial, exactly. More like a quiet kindness, wrapped in a story that felt easier to hold than the truth. Verita didn’t feel betrayed. I think she felt confused. Because, why lie when the truth was only going to hurt more? She would ask him that years later, while folding laundry with him on a quiet afternoon.

Holding an undried sock loosely in his hands, her father spoke the words that would stay with Verita for a lifetime: “Sometimes, people need something to believe in. A promise which feels warmer than a loss. Electa needed that warmth more than she needed the facts.” Verita didn’t argue. But in that moment, a seed was planted deep within her, the first flicker of understanding that truth and goodness don’t always align.

In college, Verita became obsessed with frameworks. A way of seeing the world that would justify people’s choices. They gave meaning to actions, offered reasons behind decisions. She threw herself into anything that promised this clarity and order. Utilitarianism, with its cold calculations of maximizing happiness and minimizing harm, felt like the kind of honesty life had never given her. Treat every choice weighing its benefits and harms. A cost benefit analysis with a real focus on the benefit. That's the search for meaning, she used to think.

And she liked that. It was clean, simple, and straight to the point. Driven by the desire to be someone who could stand in the eyes of chaos and still make the least-worst choice, she studied public policy. Then criminal justice, which landed her in law enforcement. She believed her Father would be proud, but she should have stopped to wonder how much that kind of clarity would cost her.

When the crowd turned, Verita was only thirty-two. Two hours past shift-end at the mouth of Moral Avenue. She was drenched in sweat, and her eyes weren’t any better from scanning thousands of pockets. The protest had begun peacefully. Speeches, chanting, signs made of poster board and poetry. Something about reclaiming their jobs. For families. Children. Even laughter was present.

But all it took was one thought. One choice. One moment’s analysis.

The story reached them around 20:40, shouted from somewhere in the middle of the now painted street. A dark-haired man, they said. Mid-forties. A local contractor. Someone with a temper and a chipped front tooth, always ranting at city council meetings. He'd been seen earlier pacing the edge of the protest with clenched fists, yelling at activists, spitting the word “parasites.”

Someone said he had a weapon. Another voice swore it was a gun, tucked beneath his waistband. Maybe it was real. Or maybe it was just fear. Either way, it spread like fire. By the time Verita’s unit got the call to intercept, the crowd was already humming with adrenaline, the kind that doesn’t need confirmation to act.

It only took a few minutes before they found at least someone. Someone hunched behind a delivery van. He wasn’t holding anything. No weapon, no flyer, not even a phone. Just his own arms wrapped around himself bracing for a hit that hasn't come yet. Verita didn’t know if he was guilty. Maybe he threw everything away.

He did match the vague description: white, mid-forties, plaid shirt, shaking. But he didn’t look dangerous. He looked like he might not even know where he was. The officers tightened their line. Someone threw a bottle. Someone else shouted, “That’s him! That’s the guy who was behind all this mess!” And then the fire was lit. The crowd surged. They didn’t ask. They demanded.

Verita stepped forward, her hand already on her comm. “I need a perimeter,” she said. “We need to get him out. Now.” But then she heard it, another voice, louder than the rest. A woman near the front of the mob screaming, “If you take him, we will burn the courthouse.”

And it wasn’t just her. The crowd echoed her. Chanting, swelling, becoming something else entirely. Their voices fused into one thunderous, unrelenting force. A verdict without trial. They wanted justice. Or vengeance. Or maybe just someone to bleed for the story they’d built. Blood for their city. Else more blood shed.

The second in command turned to Verita. “You know what this means,” he said. “We protect him, we lose the city. This city has already lost so much.” She didn’t respond right away. She just stared at the man, this trembling, cornered figure who might’ve been guilty of defiance, or might’ve just been the wrong place at the wrong time.

She stepped forward again. Raised her voice. “We’re taking him.” The line of officers snapped to her lead. They moved fast, formed a half-shield wall and pulled the man into their circle. The moment the crowd saw him protected, the screams went up. A bottle. Then a brick. Then fire.

At what cost? The courthouse burned by midnight. So did a school. Two squad cars. A block of apartments that had nothing to do with anything. Her entire squad was injured. One officer lost an eye. Another still walks with a limp. Verita took a pipe to the shoulder that shattered the bone and left her in physical therapy for months. The city toasted itself in rage that took decades to rebuild. Many dead, yet the man lived.

To this day, she still lives with the same question her Father made all those years ago. What was really the right choice?