There is a thing I said in this account already, on the night it happened. *A father’s guilt is not a bandage. It does not belong on the wound while the child is still bleeding.*

I had thought that was wisdom. Standing in my own kitchen with my daughter’s hand on my sternum, I understood it was something I had told myself so that I would not have to say any of this out loud.

“They’re going to ask me about it,” I said. “On the stand. Tolliver has the phone records. He’ll have that message.”

“I know.”

“He’s going to use it to say you told me and nothing happened, so it must not have been much.”

“I know.”