My granddaughter called me from the hospital at 3:17 in the morning, and before I even reached the ER, I already knew this was the night everything in our family would finally come into the open.

“I think your mother saw pieces,” I said. “I think sometimes when adults are frightened, they learn to look at the floor instead of the room. That does not make the room safer.”

Brooke absorbed that. “That sounds like yes.”

“It sounds like what I can say truthfully.”

She nodded once and reached for a slice of cucumber from the cutting board as though we were having an ordinary conversation in an ordinary kitchen, which, in its way, felt like healing.

The county prosecutor assigned to the case was a woman named Elise Monroe, forty-two, with a clipped voice, excellent posture, and a refusal to waste anyone’s time. She came to my house on a humid Thursday in June to prep Brooke for the possibility of testimony. Brooke had already told Francis and Camille she wanted to speak if the case went that far. She was not asking permission. She was informing us.