I’d ask how things were at home and her shoulders would climb toward her ears and her answers would go from paragraphs to single words.

She started asking, in a too-casual voice, whether she could stay at my place a little longer, one more night, just one, and when I said she had to go back she didn’t argue, which was worse than arguing, because Maya always argued.

A kid who stops arguing is a kid who has learned that arguing doesn’t work.

I filed all of it away and told myself I was being a paranoid divorced dad reading trouble into an ordinary blended family finding its feet.

I have gone over that decision a thousand times since.

All those small signals, and I kept waiting for a big one before I’d let myself act.