She asked me to respect her choice, and I did, though it broke my heart.
I made my peace with losing her.
But I never once imagined that you would let a child be harmed under your own roof and call it a mess to be cleaned up.”
“Sir, I can make this right, I swear it—”
“You cannot give a child back the safety you took from her,” my father said.
“That is the one thing in this world that cannot be bought back.”
I have thought about that sentence many times since, because it is the truest thing my father has ever said, and he has built a life out of knowing the price of things.
Everything else that was stolen that night had a number attached to it.
The frozen accounts had balances.
The looted pension had a figure the auditors could restore to the penny.