“She told me not to drink the juice.” My heart stopped.

“She whispered it.

At the park.

She said it makes you go to sleep.” Later, gently, a child advocate would draw out the rest: that Sondra had pushed the drink on him by telling him Mira drank it all the time, that he shouldn’t be a baby — that she had used her own daughter’s forced obedience as the lever to make my son comply.

Mira had tried to save him with a whisper before she ever saved him with a phone call.

I keep those two facts side by side in my mind, because together they tell you who my niece is.