Unstable. They used the word like a key they’d used before — the oldest move there is, to call the woman you’ve harmed hysterical, so that her truth becomes a symptom and her injuries become her own clumsiness.

I had heard that move used against other women my whole career.

I had never before heard it used against my own child, in a hospital, over her broken body, by the people who broke it.

And I knew, standing there, exactly why they reached for it, because it is the most efficient weapon in the whole arsenal of people like the Langfords.

You do not have to disprove a woman’s account if you can make people doubt her mind.

Every bruise she shows becomes evidence of her clumsiness; every accusation she makes becomes evidence of her paranoia; every tear becomes evidence of the instability you’ve diagnosed.