I knew it was his because his name was on it.”

She held the bottle out, and the doctor took it from her small hand as though it were made of glass.

I have thought so often, since, about that bottle in the bear’s overalls, and what it meant that she had hidden it there.

My daughter is seven.

She did not have the words for what she suspected.

She could not have explained a chain of custody, or evidence, or testimony; she did not know those were things.

But some clear, uncorrupted part of her had understood three things that all the adults around her had lost hold of: that something bad was happening to her baby brother, that the grown-ups who should have stopped it were the ones doing it, and that the proof had to be kept safe until she found a grown-up who would believe her.