He never hit me where it showed. That’s a thing people don’t understand about men like Dale. He was careful. He’d punch the wall right beside my head. He’d flip the coffee table. One time he screamed for three solid hours, I mean three, about the dinner being cold, walking around the house slamming doors, and I sat on the bathroom floor counting the minutes till I figured he’d wear himself out.

So I made a plan. I’m a mother, that’s what we do, we make a plan even when there’s no good one.

I found the upstairs closet. It’s the one in the hall, deep enough that two people can sit in the back with the coats pulled in front. I put a soft blanket in there. A flashlight, the little plastic kind. And a bag of Goldfish crackers, the cheddar ones, because they were Lily’s favorite and they didn’t make crumbs the way regular crackers do. When I heard Dale’s voice start climbing, I’d scoop her up and we’d go.

And here’s the part I’m most ashamed of, and you can judge me, that’s fine. I told her it was a game.

I called it our secret fort. I said only the two of us knew about it and that made it special. I’d hold her in the dark and we’d whisper and eat the crackers one at a time, and outside the door my husband was breaking our home apart, and inside that closet my baby was giggling because Mommy made it fun. She thought every house had a fort. She thought every daddy got loud. She thought hiding was just a thing families did, like saying grace.

Six years. We did this for six years and I told myself I was protecting her.

I almost left a hundred times. I’d get the bag packed and then Dale would come home with flowers and that note-in-the-pocket smile, and he’d be so sorry, so sweet, and I’d think maybe this time.

Or I’d think about money, because I didn’t have any of my own, he made sure of that. Or I’d think, where does a woman my age even go. So I stayed. I stayed and I kept the crackers fresh.

What I never once thought about, not one single time, was what was going on inside her little head while we sat in that fort. I thought because she was laughing she was okay. I thought a game would keep the fear out. Go figure. The whole time she was just learning. Soaking it all up. Writing the story of her family in her head as normal, and then writing it down for the world on pink paper with a glue stick.

Because she didn’t just make me a card.