My five-year-old daughter was still bathing with my husband. They stayed there for more than an hour every night. When I ended up asking her what they

I screamed, my voice trembling, trying not to scream, while continuing to look through the interweaving.
I didn’t say everything.

I simply repeated my address and asked them to come immediately.

Mark didn’t hear me at first.

He continued to talk to Sophie with calculated patience, like a man who believes that each of his gestures deserves confidence, even when it already feels the lie.

She was curled up in the bathtub, her knees folded against her chest.
She wasn’t crying.
That’s what broke my heart the most.
She looked like a child trained to obey.

When I pushed the door, Mark slowly turned his head, not being really surprised.
As if he still thought he could explain everything and keep control.

“What are you doing? “He asked.
He didn’t even look furious.
He seemed annoyed, as if I had interrupted some household stain, as if I were the intruder in this house.

I took Sophie out of the bath without worrying about spilled water or my soaked clothes.
I just grabbed a towel, wrapped it in it and I squeezed it against me.

Mark stood up with a jump.
He always held the cardboard cup in his hand.
I saw a white powder stuck to the wet edge, and the timer kept counting down the seconds on the sink.

“Don’t touch it,” I said.
My voice sounded so different from mine that even Sophie looked up at me as if another woman had just come in.

He put his glass down.
He opened his hands, adopting this gesture of his own, that of the reasonable man.
The gesture he used with his neighbors, his teachers, the waiters, the doctors, in short, with all those who wanted to seem sensible.

“You mix everything.
It is a medicine.
The pediatrician said that one can try long baths to help him relax and relieve his constipation. »