That is not a thought that grows on its own in a child’s heart.

It has to be planted, and watered, and tended, patiently, by an adult who wants it there.

Every time Hannah had been told to hide a photograph, to keep quiet about her mom, to stop making things harder, another drop had fallen on that seed, until it grew into a full and terrible belief: that her love for Rebecca was a danger, and her own presence was a problem, and the safest thing she could do was make herself small and quiet and out of the way.

To hear that belief come out of my daughter’s mouth, in the form of a frightened question, was to hear the sound of a childhood being quietly poisoned, and it is a sound I will never forget, and never forgive.