I could not bring myself to walk back toward the people who had chosen their pride, as I understood it then, over their own frightened daughter.

The wound was still too raw.

Every time I imagined picking up a phone or driving those familiar roads, something in me closed like a fist.

So I told her that it was complicated, that grown-ups sometimes hurt each other, that maybe someday we would, and I hoped each time that someday would stay safely far away.

Then came her tenth birthday.

We had celebrated quietly, the two of us, a small cake and a few presents I had saved for months to afford, and that evening, as I was tucking her in, she looked up at me with those thoughtful, searching eyes of hers and asked me a different version of the question, one I could not deflect.