Some doors, once you have seen through them, do not close again.

Chapter 6 — Documented

By the next morning I had stopped being only his daughter, and started being the other thing my training had made me: a person who documents.

I photographed all of it, in good light — his condition, the shut-off thermostat, the empty refrigerator, the stack of unpaid utility notices, every line of the bank statements.

I did not do it for revenge.

I did it because I had learned, at sea and in the trauma bay, that the truth does not defend itself; you have to preserve it, carefully, before anyone has a chance to explain it away.