She did not know that “the apartment is clear because she lives with Grandma” was the keystone of a fraud.

She only knew that a man had been standing in her bedroom in the dark, talking about taking her, and that it had frightened her enough to hold onto for a whole day and finally say out loud on a bus.

Children are extraordinary witnesses precisely because they do not understand what they are seeing.

An adult overhearing that phone call might have rationalized it, explained it away, found the reasonable interpretation that let them keep their comfortable life intact — because adults are very good at not seeing what it would be expensive to see.

Abigail had no such filter.