Watching her smash that strawberry, unafraid, was worth every hour of the worst season of my life.

I have thought about how young the damage starts, and how young the healing can start too, because before this happened I did not fully understand either.

People say, the way Luca said, that a two-year-old will forget — that a child that small has no real memory, that whatever happens simply washes away.

And it is true that Fiona will likely never consciously remember the banquet, the slap, the parking lot, the word she whispered.

But I have learned that conscious memory is the least of it.