“What do you mean?”

“What all has he done to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

She reaches over and picks a book up from a pile—clearly one she’s already read—and puts it in her lap, then opens to a page at random and starts twirling those braids around her fingers. “I need to know, Shanice.”

“He did enough.”

“How long has he been touching you?”

“Touching me?” She lets out a sarcastic chuckle.

“Yes.”

“He’s done more than touch me.”

“How much more?”

“How about right after you married him. When I was seven. You were always asleep when he came in to say good night to me. He would flip that light switch off right over there, but then he didn’t leave. He would walk over here and lay down next to me and give me a good-night kiss. But then he didn’t get up.”

I feel nauseous. I know he hasn’t been doing this to my daughter for five fucking years. Where was I? How in the world could I not notice something like this? And how in God’s name could she have gone all this time without telling me? “He’s been doing this to you for five years?”

“Six is closer to it. I’ll be thirteen soon, remember?”

“Shanice,” I moan.

“It’s cool, Ma. But I cleaned up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at all the shit in here. Why do you think he bought it?”

I don’t want to look. I know what’s in here. Too many stuffed animals. Too many dolls. Too many video games and gadgets. Hundreds of trinkets. I blink and blink and blink until all of it disappears. “But, Shanice, you never gave me any sign that anything was wrong.”

“My granny noticed,” she says tartly.

Is this the daughter I’ve got to live with from now on? Is her sweetness gone? Has that son-of-a-bitch destroyed it? I have never heard my daughter swear. Nor has she ever used this tone of voice when talking to me. Her head is down and I see her shoulders droop and she starts shaking her head back and forth and then she sits back up slowly.

“I’m standing here going over and over in my head why I didn’t see any signs that something was wrong.”

“Because, instead of being a cop, he should’ve been an actor, that’s why. I mean, he was this whole different person in the morning. At night he came in here. He said things. Did things. At breakfast, he was my stepdad again. He was two people.”

“This is a sickness.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. He’s sick all right. Why do you think I never wanted him to take me to track practice, Ma?”

“Because I knew you didn’t care for George.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why?”

“I thought it was because he wasn’t your real dad.”

“I don’t even remember him, Ma! I was four years old when he died.”

“Oh,” is about all I can say. I want to go sit next to her. I want to put my hand on her head the way I used to when she was little and pull her face between my breasts until I feel her breathe. I want to slide her head down my belly until it rests in my lap and stroke her hair until she falls asleep. The way we used to.