“I didn’t know—”

“You knew enough,” I said. “You knew your father hit me. You knew about Louisa. You chose the response you chose.”

Another silence.

“Is she okay?” he said.

“She’s asking for stickers and not speaking in full sentences,” I said. “She flinches at loud noises. She kept asking me last night if I was going to leave her again.”

He made a sound.

“Get a lawyer, Elmer,” I said. “And then think carefully about what you actually want and whether you’re willing to do what it takes to be her father.”

I ended the call.

Naomi looked at me.

“Good,” she said.

“Is it enough?” I said.

“The footage is enough,” she said. “Everything else is context.”

PART 5: Louisa

She asked about her hair on the third day.

We were in Naomi’s guest room, which Naomi had offered without being asked because Naomi was that kind of person.

Louisa was sitting cross-legged on the bed with her bunny, now covered in stickers, and she touched the top of her head with one hand the way she had been doing since the hotel.

“When will it grow back?” she said.

“Faster than you think,” I said. “Hair is very determined.”

“Will it be the same?” she said.

“Exactly the same,” I said.

She thought about this.

“Will it be long again?” she said.

“If you want it long,” I said.

“I want it long,” she said. “Down to here.” She touched her shoulder.

“Then that’s what will happen,” I said.

She looked at her bunny.

The sticker dinosaur.

The star.

The rainbow.

“Mommy,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Dr. Reeves believed me,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “She did.”

“You believed me too,” she said.

“Always,” I said. “From the first second.”

She climbed into my lap.

She was three years old and fit entirely.

“Grandma said I was a thief,” she said.

“Grandma was wrong,” I said.

“The camera knew,” she said.

I held her.

“Yes,” I said. “The camera knew.”

She settled against my chest.

“Can we get chocolate teddy bears?” she said.

I had forgotten.

The chocolate teddy bears.

She had asked for them every night I was away.

I had come home with nothing because I had come home to the wrong thing waiting for me and I had not gotten to the gift shop.

“Yes,” I said. “Today.”

“The ones with the little ears?” she said.

“Exactly those ones,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.

She was quiet for a moment.

Then: “Mommy.”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you came home.”

I held my daughter in Naomi’s guest room with the sticker-covered bunny between us and the legal proceedings already in motion and the camera footage already filed and Elmer somewhere deciding what kind of father he was going to be.

I held her.

“I’m glad I came home too,” I said.

The proceedings took four months.

The camera footage was, as Naomi had said, the foundation.

Everything else built from it.

Walter was charged with assault.

Lydia and Heather were charged with child endangerment and child abuse.

Heather was additionally charged with theft.

Elmer retained a lawyer.

He also, eventually, watched the footage.

He called Naomi’s office on a Wednesday and said he wanted to discuss whether there was a path to being in Louisa’s life that did not require pretending his family had done nothing wrong.

Naomi said that path existed and that it started with a specific conversation.

He had the conversation.

It was the beginning of something that would take a long time to become what it should be.

Not there yet.

Starting.

Louisa’s hair grew back.

Dark and soft and fine.

Down to her shoulder by June.

Exactly where she had said she wanted it.

She was four by then and had resumed asking eleven questions per hour and narrating her own thoughts and having opinions about everything.

One afternoon she asked me if bad people went to jail.

I said sometimes.

She thought about it.

She said that was good because then they couldn’t sh:ave anyone else.

I said yes.

That was the general idea.

She went back to her sticker book.

I watched her.

My daughter.

Fully herself again.

Determined.

Like hair.