“Aunt Veronica taught me how to polish the silverware,” Hannah said, matter-of-factly, “and how to count the wine bottles in the cellar.”

I had to sit in the truck for five full minutes with my eyes closed and my hands on the wheel, breathing the way I had been trained to breathe under fire, to keep myself from driving straight back to that house and doing something that would have landed me in a cell and left my daughter alone again.

Because that, I reminded myself, was the one thing I could not do.

My anger, however righteous, was a luxury I could not afford, because Hannah needed a father who was present and free far more than she needed a father who had felt, for one satisfying moment, the release of his own rage.