A man convicted of what Julian had been convicted of, a man who had folded his own small daughter into the machinery of his crime and asked her to keep his secret, was not going to be given a claim on her childhood, and I would have spent every last thing I had to make sure of it, though in the end I did not have to spend much at all.

People assume I must hate him.

They say it carefully, watching my face, waiting to see the anger.

And the honest answer is that I did, for a while, with an intensity that frightened me, lying awake running through the six years looking for all the moments I should have seen.

But hatred is a heavy thing to carry, and it is heaviest of all when the person you are carrying it toward is locked away and no longer thinking about you at all, and somewhere in that first year I set most of it down.

I say most, and I mean most, because I am not going to pretend to a serenity I have not fully earned.