Eleven degrees Fahrenheit with a wind off the lake.

My daughter was standing on the balcony in pajama bottoms and a short-sleeved cotton top, facing the wall, with her head shaved.

Not cropped.

Not cut short.

Shaved down to the scalp with clippers, unevenly, with a nick behind her left ear that had bled and dried.

I got the door open.

I got her inside.

She was so cold that she did not feel cold to hold — she felt like an object — and her hands had gone a color I had never seen on a child and hope never to see again.

And the first thing my daughter said to me, at three years and four months old, through her teeth, which were chattering so hard she could barely form it, was:

“Mommy.

I didn’t take it.”

I want to record what I did next, exactly, because I have been asked about it in three separate settings by people whose job it was to ask.

I did not scream.

I did not put her down.