That is a seven-year-old describing a custody evaluator, and describing a father who documents incidents at the mother’s house, and — this is the part that stopped the two people behind the wall — describing her own understanding that a sick child arriving at her mother’s on a Thursday would become evidence against her mother.

She had not walked out of that house to escape.

She had walked out of that house to prevent her mother being blamed.

The second was that this was not the first time.

Priya asked whether Delilah had ever had medicine that made her sleepy before, and Charlotte said yes, twice, and both times were “before we went to Mommy’s.”

She could not date them.