When I understood that, in the motel room, I understood the full depth of the crime, and I understood my first and most urgent task.

Before the lawyers, before the evidence, before any of it, I had to do the one thing the Millers had spent months making my daughter believe was impossible.

I had to take her side, completely and visibly and immovably, and prove to her, past all their conditioning, that she was not alone, and never had been, and never would be again.

Everything else — the house, the money, the justice — flowed from that.