It is, I have come to think, the truest work of a parent: not to be perfect, which is impossible, but to learn to see, and to keep watching even when watching is inconvenient, so that no child of yours ever has to sit alone behind a locked door wondering whether her own heart has done something wrong.

Brenda, for her part, tried to reach me many times in the weeks that followed, through texts, through emails, through mutual acquaintances, and her story shifted with each attempt, from flat denial, to insisting Hannah had exaggerated, to arguing that any good husband ought to put his wife first above all else.

I did not engage with any of it.

In the end I sent one message, through my attorney, to close the door for good.