Her voice was flat and careful in the way she got when she was truly frightened, the way she’d learned to be in that house.

I knelt down and took her by the shoulders. “No,” I said. “Listen to me. We are never going back there. I promise you that. Whatever happens, that part is over.”

I don’t know if she believed me. I’m not sure I entirely believed myself. But I said it like I did, because that is one of the things you do for your children.

That afternoon a social worker came to interview the girls, gently, one at a time.

And a medical examiner came too — Bruce’s lawyers had arranged it — and photographed the bruises on my arms and shoulders and dated them for the record, building, quietly, the true story underneath the false one.

Chapter 7 — The Bread

The day after that, a woman came to the back door with a bag of bread. I recognized her.