What keeps me up is this. Mia was not scared. That is what gets me. She was not scared of him. She drew him smiling. Little stick arms, a red hat, a smile. She put him right there next to me and Caleb and Biscuit like he was just another normal part of her world.

Which means it had been going on long enough that it felt normal to her.

I asked her about it, gently, the way you’re supposed to. I asked if anyone ever came to visit at nighttime. She nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Uncle D,” she said. “He watches movies with me sometimes.”

I had to walk out of the room for a minute after that.

Caleb, who is nine and smarter than I give him credit for, came and found me in the kitchen. He stood in the doorway and just looked at me. “Mom, I didn’t know it was bad,” he said. “I thought Dad said it was okay.”

Of course Marcus told them it was okay. Of course he did.

I have been going back and forth in my head about every night I slept through. Every night I thought the house was locked and safe. I check things. I am a checker. I check the doors, the windows, the locks. I have a whole system. And somehow, for what Dana thinks was at least two months, someone was walking through my side gate with a key I didn’t know existed, and I had no idea.

How does a key exist that I don’t know about? Dana thinks Marcus had a copy made at some point before or during the divorce, before the locks were supposed to be changed. I changed the front door lock. I did not think about the back gate padlock.

I do now.

People keep asking me if I’m okay. My sister called twice. My friend Renee, who has been through her own custody stuff, texted me a long message I still haven’t fully answered. I don’t know what to say. I’m not not okay. I’m just somewhere in the middle of it, still.

The camera is still up. I have three now, covering every angle of the exterior. The gate has a new lock. The back door has a new deadbolt. I did all of it in one weekend and I did not sleep much either of those nights.

Mia asked me last week where Uncle D went. She asked if he was coming back.

I told her no, baby. He’s not coming back.

She thought about it for a second. Then she said, “Okay,” and went back to coloring.