He remembered that day with a new and terrible clarity: Tristan had told him she fell by herself, and when I had insisted, desperate, that the boy had tripped her on purpose, Zachary had cut me off — stop hunting for problems where there aren’t any. Chloe had needed four stitches at the clinic that night.

He had not come.

He found another day: Tristan shoving me from behind while I carried a heavy pot of boiling soup, so that the scalding broth went over my hand and left it burned and blistered, and the boy running to his father in tears claiming I had nearly burned him. Zachary remembered his own words to me about my ruined hand. Can’t you be more careful?

One lie after another.