And then my daughter began repeating a strange phrase, one that lodged in my chest like a splinter.

“Everything’s okay, Mommy,” she would say.

“Don’t worry about anything.”

No five-year-old speaks like that unprompted.

That is not the language of a child; it is the language of a child who has been coached, who has been told what to say, who has learned that certain truths are not to be spoken aloud.

I asked George directly whether Chloe was being left alone, and he was instantly, performatively offended.

“Now you’re surveillance-monitoring me from a thousand miles away?” he said.