So I was done talking.

I understood, finally, that some situations are not solved with better words but with your feet, with simply and quietly removing yourself and your child from the arrangement that is harming you.

I did not need to convince Liam of anything.

I did not need him to agree that he had done wrong, or to apologize, or to understand.

I only needed to be somewhere else, with my daughter, safe.

Words had been my whole strategy for years, and words had failed.