MY HUSBAND PUSHED ME DOWN THE STAIRS IN FRONT OF OUR LITTLE DAUGHTER—BUT HIS MOTHER’S NEXT PHONE CALL EXPOSED THEIR DARKEST SECRET!

I didn't reach for the fox.

"What is he hiding?" I asked.

Sophie looked toward the window as if Margaret might be standing outside.

"I promised not to tell anybody. Grandma said people would be angry if I talked about the blue box."

"Did she make you promise?"

Sophie nodded.

I took a breath that hurt all the way down my side.

"A promise someone makes you keep because you're frightened isn't a promise you have to keep. Especially when you're protecting somebody."

She turned Fox over. Near the tail, a flap opened under the loose stitches. Inside was a memory card no larger than my thumbnail.

"The blue box has a little door," she said. "Daddy took the box, so I took the tiny piece. I didn't want him to hear my stories."

My hands began to shake.

"That was clever, baby. You don't have to show me anything else tonight."

I called Ortiz from the hallway. She asked us not to put the card into a computer or alter it. An evidence technician came to Dad's house, photographed the fox, and collected the card with Sophie's permission and mine.

"Will I have to talk to a judge?" Sophie asked the technician.

"Other adults will decide the safest way to ask what you remember," Ortiz told her. "For tonight, you get to be a kid."

After they left, I sat on the porch with Dad. The moon was a pale cutout above the driveway.

"What if there's nothing on it?" I asked.

"Then we keep looking."

"And if there is something?"

"We keep telling the truth."

The next afternoon, Ortiz asked Tessa and me to come to the station. She had the technician's report, but she wouldn't play us the recording in the lobby.

In a small interview room, she pressed a button. Sophie's voice filled the speaker, bright and cheerful.

"Once upon a time, Fox lived in an apple tree—"

Then a door banged. Ethan's voice cut across the story.

"You signed it, Leah. Stop pretending you didn't."

I heard myself say, "That's my name on a forged paper."

Feet moved. Sophie gasped. Ethan said, "Give it here."

There was a thud, a series of terrible impacts, and my daughter's scream.

For several seconds, nobody in the room moved.