I was only there to guard it.

That, I have come to believe, is a great deal of what a parent actually is: not the author of a child’s story, but the guardian of the child’s right to author it themselves.

For months, Brenda had held the pen.

She had decided what Hannah was allowed to say, and feel, and remember, and she had used that stolen authority to write my daughter into a smaller and sadder shape.

The work of the years after was, more than anything, the slow work of handing the pen back.