Chapter 6 — The Marks

That night I washed my daughter in the bathroom that had once been my father’s.

I will not catalogue what I found on her small body, for the same reason I have already given, except to say that there were no broken bones, and that every mark I did find told the story of seven months lived without a single adult willing to protect her.

I made her chicken noodle soup, and when I set down a second bowl, she reached for a napkin and began to wrap the food to hide it under her chair.