The prosecutor’s office was clear: no one was to question Mira.

Not me, not family — no one.

A forensic child psychologist did that, gently, on tape, with a caseworker from Child Protective Services in the room.

Sondra raged in the station lobby that the state was manipulating her daughter, but her fury couldn’t touch the paper trail, and I stayed where I belonged, at Rhys’s bedside, holding his cold hand while the medicine left his blood.

An hour later Detective Sorenson came to the hospital room, her face pulled tight.

Mira had told the specialist that her mother had been giving her something to make her sleep — for a long time, before family visits, before long drives, whenever Sondra decided she was being too loud or too much.