I can see Emily traveling backward fast in her mind, searching for certain memories that are changing as she reaches for them. “She always seemed fine about school, actually. Her grades stayed good. Homework was easy for her, except one year. That would have been fourth grade. For one whole term she stayed home with me.”

“A whole semester? Why?”

“She had mono. We thought that was a little funny, actually. That she’d get the kissing disease when she was so young.”

“They did used to call it that,” I say carefully, because we’re finally getting somewhere. It takes effort to speak slowly, to weigh every step. “But mono is really a suppressed immune system. That can happen with stress. Do you remember what was going on at home around that time? Was there any new adult in Cameron’s life? Someone who took a particular interest in her?”

She blinks at me, poised to fly apart. “What are you really asking?”

“Emily, I need you to think. Who could have hurt Cameron when she was too young to protect herself?” When you weren’t there, I almost say. But that won’t get us anywhere. I need to build a bridge for us now, not a wall. “When she was vulnerable?”

Emily is so still, and so afraid I can barely look at her. It’s all catching up to her, cracking her open. She starts to cry quietly, and then raggedly, her face contorting, ugly and honest. “Why?”

“It happens.” Terrible things happen in a life, Hap echoes from inside my heart.

“Think, Emily. Think about what you just told me. She had mono in fourth grade. Bad stomachaches before that. What was new at age eight and nine for Cameron? The when might tell us who.”

“You must think I’m a terrible mother.”

“I don’t,” I say, and mean it—maybe for the first time. The way I’ve been judging Emily feels cruel now, given this conversation. Maybe I’ve been unfair with her from the beginning, seeing her in a mirror and hating myself. She’s been struggling to do the right thing, even when her own hurt has made that harder than it should ever be. “You’ve done your best.”

She shudders in place. “I’ve tried.”

“Think back.” I press as gently as I can.

“We were still in Malibu then.”

“Any new babysitters or neighbors? Family friends?”

“No.”

“You never left her alone with anyone?”

“No,” she says again, but the word clicks, whirs like a timepiece. “Wait.” Blood flushes into her cheeks, the hot bloom of difficult feeling. “Cameron’s third-grade year was when my family first came to the beach house for Christmas. We’d been going to Ohio with Cameron, but that year Troy said it was bullshit to suffer through snow if we didn’t have to.”