Chapter 3 — The Pigpen

I am not going to make you live through what I found in detail, because my daughter lived through it in full, and she is the only person who has earned the right to decide how much of it is ever told, and because no child’s suffering should be laid out for a stranger’s consumption.

It is enough to say this.

I kicked open the door of the pen, and the smell of it hit the back of my throat, and in the corner, on damp burlap sacks, curled small against the cold, was my eight-year-old daughter.