To him, a child was necessarily a puppet, a thing that acted only because an adult pulled the strings, because that is how he related to people: as instruments to be moved.

He had used my sister, used my family’s willingness to accept situations, used the polished surface of a devoted husband, all as instruments toward his own ends.

And so, faced with a daughter who had acted from her own independent moral center, his mind could only reach for the explanation that fit his own worldview: someone must be using her.

He literally could not see his own child as a moral agent, because he had never learned to see anyone that way.