Pamela had built her whole campaign against my daughter specifically in the spaces where I could not see — during my deployments, behind closed kitchen doors, in the private threats she made a child swear to keep.

I had not ignored a danger I could see.

I had been deceived by a person skilled at deception, in exactly the ways designed to keep me from seeing.

That did not erase my responsibility to have looked harder.

But it did let me set down a portion of the guilt that would have been no use to Hannah, and pick up instead the only thing that was: the work of protecting her now.

Chapter 16 — The Memory Cabinet