It was not that he did not know the answer; the answer was the surest thing in his entire life.

It was that the question existed at all.

It was the sudden, gutting understanding of what Beatrice had actually accomplished in three years, that she had planted, deep inside a little girl, the terrible idea that a father’s love might be revocable, that it might be something Chloe could lose by causing trouble, that the people who loved her would only keep loving her as long as she stayed quiet and did not make anyone angry.

Caleb pulled himself back together, and he looked her dead in the eye, and he said it with a conviction that filled the whole small room.