My husband rubbed his forehead.
“She is eight.”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t understand everything.”
“No,” the pediatrician said. “Which is why the adults around her have to be especially careful.”
He looked at me.
“You’re really going through with this?”
I didn’t know what he meant.
“The report?”
I swallowed.
“I didn’t make that decision.”
“You brought her here.”
“Yes.”
“You knew this would happen.”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You knew.”
I shook my head.
“I knew she was scared.”
“That doesn’t mean my mother abused her.”
The word hung in the room.
Abused.
My daughter went completely still.
I wished he hadn’t said it.
Not because the word was wrong.
Because she was hearing it.
The pediatrician noticed too.
She crouched slightly so she was closer to my daughter’s eye level.
“You don’t have to decide what anything is called,” she said. “You just have to tell the truth about what happened.”
