I paused the footage again and again, hoping I had misunderstood. Emma’s blank stare, her lips moving in the dark, Max whispering back to her as if answering something no one else could hear—it all felt wrong. Not criminal, not monstrous, but deeply, viscerally wrong. I realized then that my terror wasn’t only about what Max was doing, but about how little control I had over my daughter’s pain.
When I confronted him, his explanation was simple: he was just trying to comfort a terrified child. No hidden intentions, no secret perversion—only clumsy, desperate care. It didn’t erase my unease, but it reshaped it. The real horror wasn’t my husband; it was the unseen weight Emma carried from her past, the nightmares I had tried to pretend would fade on their own. Booking the psychologist felt like admitting failure as a mother, yet also like the first real act of protection. For the first time, instead of watching in fear, I chose to fight for her healing.
