The worst of it was a Tuesday in October and it was ostensibly about a permission slip.

She screamed at me in the kitchen that I never believed her, which was not true about the permission slip and was extremely true about eighteen months, and then she said — and she is a precise child, and she chose it — “You didn’t even notice.”

I said, “You’re right.

I didn’t.”

She had prepared for a defense, and when it didn’t come she stood in the kitchen and cried, and I did not hug her, because Dr.

Roshan had told me that a hug in that particular moment ends the conversation for my benefit rather than hers.