An officer walked the backyard with a camera.

Another knelt by Mrs.

Harris and wrote down every word the old woman had been trying to get someone to hear for weeks.

And Maya would not let go of my hand — through the blanket, through the examination, through all of it, her fingers stayed locked around two of mine, and every minute or so she would say, in a small flat voice, “Don’t make me go back in there,” and every minute or so I would say, “You’re never going back in there.

I promise you that.” The paramedics told me, quietly, off to the side, that she was dehydrated and hadn’t been eating and was badly frightened, but that there was nothing they could see that wouldn’t mend, and that they wanted to take her in mostly because no one yet knew how long she’d been on her own or what she’d seen.

That word — seen — sat between us.