Pia took a deep breath. Occasionally in life there is a key crossroads moment that can be identified as such even as it’s taking place. Pia understood she couldn’t hide or keep quiet. The time to talk was now. Except with her caseworker, Sheila Brown, she’d never talked about her childhood. She took another breath. She felt as if the room were closing in on her. The only light in the room was a small library light on the desk, which put Rothman’s face in shadowy relief.

“I do remember my mother—not much, just little things. She was also a Pia. My first name is actually Afrodita, but we were both called Pia. Sometimes out of the blue, a scent on someone or a gesture will make me think of her. But she died when I was little. I don’t know how, and I don’t even know how I know she died, but I do. I lived somewhere in the city with my father, Burim, and his older brother, Drilon, who stayed with us. They were Albanians, real Albanians, just off the boat, very rough around the edges. My father was away a lot, and I had to spend time with my uncle, who was a real creep. Have you got any water or anything?” Pia’s throat was dry.

Rothman got out a bottle from a small fridge under the Nespresso machine. He pushed it and a cup across the desk’s leather surface.

“He hit me a couple of times, my uncle. He used to touch me, never when my father was around, he was very careful. He made me touch him inappropriately, to say the least. He took pictures of me, you know, and developed them himself, and I think he used to sell them to other creeps like him. It developed into a side business for him. One night I had enough, and I went for him.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to stab him in the penis with a pair of scissors. Unfortunately I missed the target. It bled a lot. I remember later during first-year anatomy when the professor was talking about the femoral artery and joked about how you should avoid puncture wounds there. I suppose that’s where I must have stabbed my uncle.

“When he got out of the hospital, he beat me up pretty well, and I guess someone called nine-one-one about a little girl with a bruised face because the police came and grabbed me. My uncle and my dad both got arrested. So I became the property of New York City Child Protective Services.”

Pia took another drink of water.

“And your father?”