“Alice,” I begin, then pause. I think of how to say the things I want to say to her. The things I want to tell her so maybe she will understand. Maybe she will empathize with the person I really am—the mother taken from her own family, missing her own children and her own husband and her own home. Maybe she will understand, even from what little she knows of the world, that no one can be happy as a prisoner. I’ve seen the books in her playroom. I know the things she reads for her schoolwork. She has begun to learn about the world, and about human suffering. I think that maybe she can use that knowledge and apply it here, to our situation. The words begin to form. If I can make her see me, then maybe I can rid myself of this hatred.

None of this is her fault.

But something about her makes me stop. Something I know in my gut. The exaggerated sobs. The flow of tears. It is not normal. It is reactive. Responsive, but not like any child I have ever known. Whatever has happened in this house, it has invaded her mind, wired it in a way that I cannot comprehend. And if I cannot comprehend it, I cannot trust it, either.

“Alice,” I say. “I’m sad because you told me this might be the end and I don’t want to leave you. It makes me scared because I don’t know what it means.”

Her eyes widen. New tears fall from them.

“Well,” she says, trying to find words to explain things, “when my first mommy started to sleep with me, she said it was to get away from him. But then he would sneak in with us anyway, and that was when she got lost in the woods. That was when she died.”

I think about what this means—was her first mommy trying to escape him by sleeping with her child? Thinking he would leave her alone? And when he didn’t, when he still came into her bed, exposing Alice to whatever it was he did to her—maybe that was what made her try to escape. Maybe she thought it was safer for Alice if she left than if she stayed.

The thought is sickening. And yet, here I am, willing to do anything to keep my own daughter safe. Maybe this other woman thought she could make it out and then come back for Alice.

Alice squeezes my hands tighter and a smile appears. Happy Face.

“But,” she says. “I think I was wrong about this being the same thing,” she says.

“How come?” I ask. “What’s happened?”

She pulls her hands away and wipes her face.

“He said I can’t sleep in your room anymore.”