Moment of truth has arrived for Bears

There’s a story I need to tell.

It’s one of a family, a team, a group of men living with a family history that they are trying to erase but can’t seem to put behind them. A history that, with every step they take, every yard forward, is held against them. Even in victory. A history only a miracle — a football mirage — can conceal.

It begins in 2017, when the damning effects of losing two third-round picks and a fourth-round pick to move up a single slot in the draft (from No. 3 overall to No. 2) to select Mitch Trubisky while Patrick Mahomes, Christian McCaffrey, T.J. Watt, Budda Baker, Cooper Kupp and others were available still haunts the team eight years later.

This moment provides the main plot that is the foundation of this story.

From there, mystery unfurls. Suspect coaching changes, suspect quarterback changes, suspect front-office moves and decisions, suspect trades and draft choices, suspect understanding of the definition of ‘‘not rebuilding,’’ suspect ownership competence, suspect decisions by general managers, suspect of all GM hires named Ryan, suspect commitment to winning, suspect desire to live up to being what it means to be a remaining charter franchise in the NFL.

Everyone and everything, suspect.

For years, fans and media members investigate the crimes committed. Clues so in plain sight that only the clueless sense the ‘‘something ain’t right’’ of it all. ‘‘All of these decent players, fooling each other.’’ Being fooled. Knowing the continuum of losing and underachieving seasons may not be random occurrences. That the kidnapping of the city’s spirit could be . . . intentional.

Is there a culprit, a single person to be held responsible for this? A single being who can be held accountable for the year-over-year cataclysm of sabotage? Espionage? Is there someone — a McCaskey, maybe — holding on to secrets while acting as an inherited patriarch making all around him think he’s the one holding the family together when he’s really the one tearing them apart from the inside?

The first plot twist comes in the form of trading the No. 1 overall pick six years afterward for draft picks and a wide receiver who had yet to make the Pro Bowl. The second plot twist, once they got the No. 1 pick for the second year in a row, comes with the arrival of the perceived franchise player while keeping a head coach who was involved in the kidnapping. The third plot twist arrived in the form of a new leader with an adversarial past, a face of innocence, using all the believable crime-solving words.

Each episode washes away some of the past narrative. Still, there are so many open-ended questions. The intensity rises. Nothing goes as planned, yet everything falls into place. The arc of the narrative is all over the place, yet it’s still easy to follow. The crime stays unsolved, yet the ‘‘detectives’’ are less incessant on solving the case. Things seem headed in the right direction. They — we — want to see just where the next installment leads.

And, eventually, just what it finally leads us to.

This drama-filled, heart-palpitating, unpredictable, absurdly twisty, nonfiction mystery thriller of a season for the Bears has gotten us to this in medias res. Season 9, Week 11, Episode 10. Everything in this story since the premise in 2017 and the promise of 2025 has led to this point of no return in their story. Where the rubber hits the road, where all the past and lingering pretense is out of the way, where the feelings hit the fan, where we realize we have no clue as to what direction the story will go.

Only eight episodes left. This is the best part. The most unnerving part. When all of the questions will be answered, mysteries disposed, crimes of the past solved. As the Vikings, the antagonists from Episode 1 of the season, return as the first of seven more characters whose sole role will be making us believe that they aren’t the enemies at the center of this. That all along the monsters in this whole story are from the Midway. That the enemy exists — as it always has — from within.

Everything breaks open. Like Episode 5 of ‘‘All Her Fault.’’ We begin to find out whom the bad guys are and whom they aren’t; what the main characters are made of and what they aren’t built for; who exactly will be responsible for what happens in the season finale.

Justin Jefferson reemerges as the main suspect this week. Darnell Wright continues to emerge as the tertiary protagonist to Caleb Williams’ heroism and Ben Johnson’s (Detective Alcaraz) moral center and ingenuity. Green Bay, Detroit, a city in defense of its crown — all will enter as villains. Spotlight on Ryan Poles and Kevin Warren as either victims or outside members of the family culpable of being serial criminals. Scapegoats. Accessories to the spirit kidnapping.

All of the anticipation for the resolution of years of conflict that saw a theme change this year will be revealed. Eight years of exposition has finally reached the central piece, the pinpoint. Pray that no one wearing blue and orange ends up being Peter.

The beginning of story’s end airs Sunday. It’s the vertex. Where the worst nightmares of all psychological family dramas come true. Or don’t. Where the kidnapping ends and the spirit is returned and the family sees that all of the drama is behind them. Until the next episode . . .