That is, I now think, a belief you can only hold if nobody has ever had a reason to say otherwise about you.

Part Seven: Twenty-One Films

A skeletal survey is not one X-ray.

It is a standardized set — about twenty-one images in a six-month-old — covering the skull, the spine, the ribs, the pelvis and every long bone, taken in prescribed views, read by a pediatric radiologist.

It is mandatory in this country for any child under two with a suspicious injury, and it exists for one reason, which is that an infant who has been hurt once has frequently been hurt before and cannot say so.

Esme’s was done on the afternoon of the eleventh.