And Sabrina Pike — who had been in three foster placements and one aunt’s house and one apartment with a man who told her nobody would ever find her — said:

“I understand now. I’ve understood since I was seven. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand.”

“Then what is it?”

And there it was, finally, at eleven-forty at night in a kitchen, five months in.

“You’re doing all of it,” she said. “All twenty years. All at once. On me.”

I put down the cloth I was holding.