Because there is a specific grief in watching a small child be good at leaving — in seeing that a four-year-old already knows how to pack, already understands that homes are places you get taken out of, already has the quiet competence of a person who has learned not to make a fuss when the ground shifts.

Chloe should not have known how to do that.

A four-year-old asked to leave her home ought to cry, ought to cling, ought to demand her toys and her bed and an explanation.

Mine folded her shirts.

And in that small, terrible efficiency was the whole indictment of the life I had let her be raised in — a life that had already taught her, at four, that her feelings were an inconvenience best kept small, that upheaval was to be met with silence, that the safest thing a child could do was to be no trouble at all.

I made her a second promise then, silently, watching her pack.