That is how an infant first learns the most important thing a human being can learn, the thing all later security is built upon: that the world is trustworthy, that her needs will be met, that she is not alone.

A full refrigerator, to a small child, is not merely food.

It is the physical, visible, touchable proof of that trust, the evidence that the people who love her are watching over her, that tomorrow will be provided for, that she is safe.

And when George locked my daughter alone in a house with an empty refrigerator, he did not just fail to feed her for two days.

He struck at the very foundation of her sense that the world could be trusted, taught her, in the most primal terms available to a five-year-old, that the food might not come, that she might be alone, that she could not count on being cared for.