Not a candle’s worth of hurt feelings.

The slow teaching of a bright seven-year-old that some rooms are not safe to be herself in, that her belonging is a thing to be anxiously monitored, that love comes with terms and conditions she must read carefully and never violate.

You cannot sue a woman for that.

You cannot even name it out loud without sounding unhinged.

But it is real, and it is a kind of theft, and my daughter had been robbed of three years of Christmases by it before Brandon finally found the one thing that could make it stop.

Chapter 3 — The Father He Chose to Be