My granddaughter is four years old. Last Saturday she asked me to play something she called the quiet game, and I haven’t slept right since.

She stays with me every weekend, has since she was a baby.

Calls me Nana, drags her little backpack through my door like she owns the place. I’ll be honest with you, those Saturdays are the best part of my whole week. We make pancakes. She likes hers with the chocolate chips even though her mother would have a fit if she knew. That morning she was sitting at my table swinging her legs, syrup on her chin, and out of nowhere she goes, “Nana, let’s play the quiet game.”

I had my back to her, flipping the next batch. “What’s the quiet game, baby?”

And she said it so plain. Like it was hopscotch. Like it was nothing. “It’s when Mommy puts me in the closet and says be very quiet so her friend doesn’t know I’m here.”

I put the spatula down. I remember that part real clear because the pancake burned and I didn’t even care. I turned around and tried to keep my voice nice and easy so I wouldn’t scare her. “When does Mommy play this game with you?”

“When the man comes,” she said. She was picking at a chocolate chip. “He doesn’t like kids. Mommy says if he hears me, he’ll leave.”

Now my daughter Rachel started seeing somebody back in March. Wouldn’t tell me much, just kept saying, “He’s different, Mom. He’s not like the other ones.” I let it go. She’s a grown woman, thirty-one years old, I’m not gonna sit there grilling her about her love life. I figured different was a good thing. Lord, I had no idea what different meant.

“How long do you stay in the closet, sweetheart?” I asked her.

She shrugged like it was the most normal thing in the world. “A long time. Until the TV gets loud.”

Until the TV gets loud. I’m sitting here typing that and my hands are still shaking a little. My granddaughter. Four years old. Folded up in a dark closet with her stuffed bunny, waiting for the television to get loud enough that her mother could come let her out. So a man wouldn’t find out she existed.

I didn’t say anything dramatic. I didn’t want her to feel like she did something wrong, because she didn’t. I just wiped her chin and told her I’d be right back, and I went into my bedroom and I called Rachel.

She picked up all cheerful. “Hey Mom, is she behaving?”

“Rachel,” I said. “Does he know you have a daughter?”

There was this silence. You ever hear a silence and just know? I knew before she said one word.

“Mom, it’s complicated.”

“It’s not complicated. Does he know about Lily, yes or no.”