What he could not account for, what no one exploiting a grieving adult can ever fully account for, was a grieving child, because a child’s grief does not work the same way.

Chloe’s grief did not disarm her inquiry; it sharpened her attention, focused it entirely on her father, kept her looking when my adult grief had turned my eyes away.

The very fog that Marcus used to blind me was the thing that, in my daughter, burned away into a laser of pure attention.

He weaponized my grief against me.

He did not understand that a child grieves differently, and that in that difference lay the undoing of his perfect crime.

Chapter 4 — She Was Observing