There is no email, no text, no phone log, no payment, and no piece of paper anywhere in the world connecting Gerald Rask to a single thing my daughter said.

I have spent a great deal of money establishing that there is nothing, and there is nothing.

And she was, at that age, extraordinarily precise about time.

Children are.

They do not know what a quarter is but they know exactly how many sleeps until something, and they will tell you without prompting that a man came on the day of the assembly, which was the Wednesday, which was the day before the field trip.

Four questions a month for nineteen months from a child in the hallway is not a spy novel.