Chloe was four, and she was already, that night, doing the math herself — already reaching to give the food back, already apologizing, already understanding, in whatever way a four-year-old understands, that in this house she was the one who came second, whose wants were problems, whose tears were theater.

She was learning to be overdrawn.

She was learning to expect the scale to tip against her, and to tip herself against herself before anyone else could, to get it over with.

I could raise her to unlearn a great many things.

But I was not going to raise her another single day inside a house that was teaching her that lesson, and I think, somewhere under the calm, I had already decided that before Zachary finished his sentence.\n\nChapter 3 — The Twenty-Eighth Time

Something came loose in me at those words, quietly, like a bolt worked free after years of pressure.