But I built the door, and I left it standing open, for years, and I called the leaving noble.

A predator cannot terrorize a child in a home with a present, attentive, listening parent, because there is no room for it; the presence itself is the protection.

What I had done, without ever intending it, was to remove the protection, systematically, year after year, until my home was a place where a cruel woman could reign unopposed for four months over two grieving children, and their own father would not know.

That is not Chloe’s crime.