I kept one hand on the driver’s door.

“Did your mother hit our daughter?”

He rubbed his face.

“You know how Mom gets when she’s upset.”

That was his answer.

Not yes, and it was wrong. Not I’m so sorry, is Fiona okay. Not even a simple acknowledgment of the fact that his mother had struck his child.

Just an excuse, reflexive and immediate — you know how Mom gets — as though his mother’s temper were a weather condition rather than a choice, as though a two-year-old with a handprint on her face were a regrettable but understandable side effect of Grandma being in a mood.

In that one sentence, standing in a parking lot with our daughter shaking in the car behind me, my husband told me everything about where his loyalty actually lived.