“And you came.” I had to leave the room for a minute after that.

A father is allowed that.

When I came back in, steadier, I sat down and I told my daughter something I needed her to hear and keep, and I chose the words carefully because I knew she’d carry them a long time.

I told her that hiding had not been weakness.

That some part of her, and some part of her mother, had been so smart and so brave under the worst pressure a person can face — that her mother, in the middle of her own terror, had thought first of getting Maya safe, and that Maya, a ten-year-old alone in the dark, had done the hard frightening thing of staying hidden and quiet exactly as her mother asked, for days, waiting, trusting that someone would come.

“You were so brave,” I said.