D.D. watched them embrace for a long time, a four-year-old’s rail-thin arms wrapped tautly around her father’s solid presence. She heard Jason murmur something low and soothing to his child. She saw him lightly stroke Ree’s trembling back.

She thought she understood just how much Clarissa Jones loved both of her parents. And she wondered, as she often wondered in her line of work, why for more parents, their child’s unconditional love couldn’t be enough.

They debriefed ten minutes later, after Marianne had escorted Jason and Ree out of the building. Miller had his opinion. Marianne and D.D. had theirs.

“Someone entered the home Wednesday night,” Miller started out. “Obviously had a confrontation with Sandra, and little Ree believes that someone is her father. ’Course, that could be an assumption on her part. She heard footsteps, assumed they had to be from her dad, returning home from work.”

D.D. was already shaking her head. “She didn’t tell us everything.”

“No,” Marianne agreed.

Miller glared at the two of them.

“Ree totally got out of bed Wednesday night,” D.D. supplied. “As is exhibited by the fact she went out of her way to tell us she didn’t.”

“She got out of bed,” Marianne seconded, “and saw something she’s not ready to talk about yet.”

“Her father,” Miller stated, sounding dubious. “But at the end, the way she hugged him …”

“He’s still her father,” Marianne supplied softly. “And she’s vulnerable and terribly frightened by everything going on in her world.”

“Why’d he let her come in, then?” Miller challenged. “If she came into the bedroom Wednesday night and saw her father fighting with her mom, he wouldn’t want her to testify.”

“Maybe he didn’t see her appear in the doorway,” D.D. suggested with a shrug.

“Or he trusted her not to tell,” Marianne added. “From a very early age, children get a feel for family secrets. They watch their parents lie to neighbors, officials, other loved ones—I fell down the stairs, of course everything is fine—and they internalize those lies until it becomes as second nature to them as breathing. It’s very difficult to get children to disclose against their own parents. It’s like asking them to dive into a very deep pool and never take a breath.”

D.D. sighed, eyed her notes. “Not enough for a warrant,” she concluded, already moving on to next steps.

“No,” Miller agreed. “We need a smoking gun. Or, at the very least, Sandra Jones’s dead body.”

“Well, start pushing,” Marianne informed them both. “Because I can tell you now, that child knows more. But she’s also working very hard at not knowing what she knows. Another few days, a week, you’ll never get the story out of her, particularly if she continues to spend all her time with dear old dad.”