For some reason I can’t stop following the seal with my eyes. The way the animal struggles along through loose sand, throwing its body forward like a seesaw or like a bag of rocks. It wasn’t made to move like this, wasn’t made for the earth at all, but for water. And yet it keeps going.

“Sometimes our dreams can be the most revealing things about us. Who we are when no one’s looking, who we believe we’re truly supposed to be, if we can get there.”

She flicks her eyes at the photo again, and then stares at me, confused or angry or both. “Are you saying this Cameron is more real than the girl I saw every day?”

“Not the makeup, Emily. That’s not what I mean. The wishing. The wanting to be more.”

As she shakes her head, I can see she’s not following me at all. Maybe it’s because I’m barely following myself. This might be the wrong conversation completely.

Before I can censor or second-guess myself, I say, “Emily, I don’t mean to hurt or shock you, but I have reason to suspect your daughter might have been sexually assaulted as a child. Do you know anything about that?”

She freezes so fast it’s like I’ve punched her. But of course I have. “Why would you even say that?”

All I can do is keep talking, hating every word. “Some evidence has come forward from a health clinic Cameron visited about a month ago. I can’t share more right now, but the exam showed internal scarring.”

“What?” The word rips through the air between us. The sand at our feet feels treacherous, full of knives. Of all the questions Emily’s fighting with now, about why Cameron had gone to the clinic in the first place and hidden it from her, only one issue has the power to kill her a little. Or a lot.

Me too. “Can you think of a time when Cameron was young when her personality seemed to change? When she started to have bathroom accidents at night? Or asked to sleep with the light on? She might have been having nightmares or acting out suddenly, becoming more emotional for no reason?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember anything like that.” She shakes her head, thinking, her honey-colored hair whipping past her face.

“Lydia says that Cameron used to seem lighter somehow. Does that make sense to you?”

“I don’t know,” Emily says again. “Maybe. There was a time when she started having a lot of stomachaches. I thought it was just nerves about tests or whatever. She’s a sensitive person.”

“How old was she then?”

“Eight or nine?”

“Were her symptoms worse in the mornings? Or when she’d try and do her homework?”