“Is he my dad?”

“Yes.”

She thought about that for what felt like a very long time and was probably four seconds.

“Then why did you say he was nobody?”

Here is the moment. I want it down accurately, because it is the reason for everything in this account and because I got it wrong for a full ten seconds first.

The answer I started to give was the good one. He hurt us. He did something illegal and he went to prison for it. He wasn’t safe. You were little. I was protecting you.