I have learned since that what you see with your own eyes is only ever the part someone is willing to perform for you, and that the truth of a person lives in the moments they think no one is watching.

I had not yet learned to look for those moments.

I was about to.

And I think about that kiss on the top of Hannah’s head often, because it is the perfect image of the whole deception.

It was a real gesture, performed at a real moment, in front of the one audience that mattered, me.

It cost Brenda nothing and it bought her everything: my trust, my gratitude, my certainty that my daughter was safe in her care.

What I did not see, could not see, was what happened to my daughter in the rooms I had already left, when the audience was gone and the performance could stop.