A house can be defended.

But he had put fear where a child’s basic trust in the world should be, and that, I would spend a long time helping her heal.

And I learned, over those long weeks of healing, that you cannot argue a child out of a fear like that.

I could not sit Chloe down and explain, reasonably, that the danger was over now, that her father was gone, that the refrigerator would always be full, and expect the explanation to reach the deep and wordless place where her fear actually lived.

That place does not speak the language of reason; it was formed before reason, and it heals below reason, through repetition, through experience, through ten thousand small proofs accumulated over time.