“I remember that, too.” Her arms tighten around my neck. More of her weight is settling into my lap. Another instinct—to overexplain. To keep talking until I’ve covered over the past with my words. I want to move us into the future, assure her that it won’t happen again. That’s a promise I can keep. I will never fight with her father again. He’ll never hit me again. He’ll never touch me again.

I don’t say those things, either.

I wait. I hope I’m projecting calm. Giving her the impression that this is a space to share her feelings. No matter how much I wish we could both forget.

“He would shout. He had a loud voice.”

Even louder when you stood in the same room, the way I did. “He used a very loud voice.”

The word choice seems important right now. Rhys chose to be loud and intimidating. He wasn’t always that way. Like most people, he had the capability to speak in a level tone. That’s not how he chose to be when he was angry. I could see him deciding to get louder. I’ve heard people describe angry men as “losing control,” but that’s not what happened with Rhys. If he apologized at all, he would use that excuse, too. It was a lie. He knew what he was doing. He felt entitled to violence. It was no loss of control.

“I remember,” Paige begins again. “I remember that I would stay in my room. You said that I should stay in my room until you came to get me.”

“I did say that.”

“Why?” She turns her head and rubs her face into my shoulder, then rests again. “Why did you say I should stay in there? Stay in there and stay quiet,” she murmurs, almost to herself.

I can still taste those words on my tongue, and the desperation that came along with them. How do you communicate to a child that it’s very, very serious, that it could be life or death? You can’t. I couldn’t. I had to pray that Paige understood, on some level, that our safety depended on her staying put. I feel so damn guilty about it. That old guilt makes my throat tight.