All the way open?” And I said of course, all the way open, always, and I showed him how to prop it with the little wooden wedge I’d use later that week to prop every interior door in the house, because it turned out Ollie needed to be able to see out and Josie needed to be able to see him, and a closed door was not restful to either of them but frightening in a way I did not ask them to explain.

I did not ask.

That is a thing I learned early and fast, that healing does not come from making a child narrate what happened to them for the comfort of an adult who wants to understand.

It comes from the adult simply fixing the thing without requiring the explanation.

There is a hunger, when you love someone who’s been hurt, to know.

To have them tell you everything, so you can understand it, hold it, prove you can bear it — and it feels like closeness, that wanting to know, but it is often just your own need dressed as care.