Brenda was asking me, with her whispered plea, to protect her from the first by imposing the second.

And I understood, standing there, that a great many quiet family cruelties survive precisely because the adults involved choose the comfortable silence over the uncomfortable truth, over and over, until the child simply learns to carry it.

I was not going to be one more adult who chose his own comfort, or even a guilty woman’s comfort, over my daughter’s wellbeing.

If someone had to be embarrassed, it was not going to be the child.