To me, that same sight had been unthinkable, and so I had not thought it — the mind protects the people it loves by refusing to assemble the evidence against them.

Esme’s mind had no such loyalty to protect.

She loved her grandmother, but she loved her more as a person she watched than as an idea she defended, and so when the watching and the idea came into conflict, the watching won.

That is the whole reason I am alive to write this.

Not my education, not my caution, not any wisdom of mine.

The unguarded honest eyes of my eight-year-old, and her decision — small, enormous — to lean close and tell me what they had seen.