I have heard that apology from so many victims over the years that I could have recited it along with him, and it never stops being the cruelest wound of all, because it means the abuser has succeeded at the deepest level — has convinced the person they are hurting that the hurting is somehow their own fault, their own failure, their own shame to carry quietly under a coat.

Julian and Chloe had not only taken my father’s money and marked his body.

They had taken his sense of himself as a person with a right to be safe, had worn it down over months of telling him he was confused, worthless, unbelievable, a burden they were generous to tolerate, until an intelligent proud man who had raised two children and built a whole life sat on a bathroom floor and apologized to his own daughter for having been hurt.

I held his hands and I told him, as clearly and firmly as I have ever told anyone anything, that none of it was his fault.