“What do you do in there at night?”

“What?” I’m startled not only by the question but by the fact that she’s still over on the bed and I’m still standing by the door. She is not in my lap. And she’s not my baby anymore. But I’m still her mother. “That’s none of your business.”

“He made it my business.”

“I read.”

“I do, too. See, here’s a book to prove it.” She holds it up, then drops it back in her lap.

“And then I sleep.”

“Well, I learned how to sleep with my eyes open and stay awake even when they were closed.”

I cover my mouth and feel tears rolling down my cheeks. She knows I’m crying. But she doesn’t care. She’s not even looking at me. And why isn’t she crying?

“What else did you do in there?” she asks.

“What normal grown-ups do.”

“Normal?” Now she gives me a cutting look. You’d think she hated my guts. “He’s not normal,” she says.

“I know that now.”

“Granny says you read too many romance novels.”

“How does your granny know what I read?”

“Because I told her.”

“I read what I like to read.”

“She said you’re living in a dream world. And you know what? She’s right.”

“Stop it!”

“You stop it.”

“Okay,” I say, and blow my nose on my sweatshirt. I look at her again, still sitting there. I’m going to get her a new bed. This one’s out of here. Tomorrow, in the trash it goes, along with anything and everything else he’s ever bought her. I cross my arms and watch her read. “Shanice?”

“What?” she asks, still not looking up.

“Why couldn’t you just tell me this was going on?”

“I’ve already told you.”

“No you didn’t. You said I wouldn’t have believed you, but that’s not good enough. There has to be another reason. Why?”

“Because he said that if I ever told he would do more than what he’d been doing, and it would hurt worse.”

Something thick is moving up into my throat. I reach down and grab the white trash basket and let whatever needs to come up, out. Shanice doesn’t budge. She just keeps right on reading. I set the basket outside the door. I’m hot. And I’m even more confused. Since she was seven years old? My baby. That sick son-of-a-bitch. When I met George he was in the process of divorcing his second wife, a woman I’d never met, but I knew she had two daughters about Shanice’s age. Had he done the same thing to them? And what about his grown daughters by his first wife? I think I have the first one’s number somewhere. I need to know. I have to know. But how could he have been so clever? I’m not that stupid. And for so long? And why on earth would a grown man want to mess with a little girl? My little girl? “I’m sorry,” I hear myself say again.