I sat on that grass for a bit longer than I needed to.

Because the thing I had been terrified of, for four years — the thing I had gone to therapy about and had lain awake about and had asked Dr.

Park about in eleven different ways — was that what happened in that kitchen had gone into her permanently, in a place I could not reach, and that some part of my daughter would always believe, underneath everything, that she was a person things get done to.

And what I had just watched was a six-year-old confirming a boundary she considered settled and then going to play.

Not healed.

I do not think that is a word that applies and I have stopped using it.