That was not a loss of control.

That was the whole point.

I have come to believe that privacy is the natural habitat of this particular kind of harm, and that my long devotion to keeping things private and quiet and between us had been, without my ever intending it, a gift to the people hurting my child.

Think about how much of it depended on privacy.

The abuse happened behind a closed door, in a house I was not allowed inside.

The cover stories worked because each witness — a paramedic, a counselor, me — only ever saw one isolated piece, and there was no shared record where the pieces could be laid beside each other and seen to contradict.