But she did it herself, from her own heart, and no one, least of all the father she exposed, gets to take that truth away from her.

Chapter 19 — Letting Her Be Nine

The months that followed were, in a quiet and unglamorous way, the most important of all of it, because they were the months in which I did the real work — the work of giving my daughter back her childhood.

It was not dramatic.

There was no single moment, no scene.

It was a hundred small things, done patiently, over time.

It was finding her a good counselor, someone she could talk to about the enormous thing she had carried and done.