“Since when, baby?” And my daughter held up two small fingers.

Two days.

I will not linger on the details of what those two days had been, because my daughter lived them and does not need them retold, and because some things a mother witnesses are not for the page.

It is enough to say that she was five years old, and she had been alone in that house for nearly forty-eight hours, and she had done her frightened best to take care of herself, and she had been failed, catastrophically, by every adult who was supposed to protect her except the one who had just walked through the door.

I dialed 911, and then Child Protective Services, and while we waited for the paramedics she clung to my uniform with a grip I can still feel.