That would have been clumsy and obvious.

Instead he worried about me.

He noticed, sadly, how Christopher seemed to be positioning himself.

He wondered whether I should be so trusting.

He planted, over months, a low steady hum of doubt, always framed as concern for my wellbeing, until I had drifted far enough from the one man who would have protected me that I no longer even called him.

That is the terrible craft of it.