My husband hammered a nail into our 7-year-old daughter’s foot to force her to study instead of running, ignoring her bloody screams. When my father burst in to save her, my husband brutally smashed the heavy hammer into his head, leaving him bleeding on the floor.

I looked up.

“What did he say?”

The detective hesitated.

“He said he believed your husband was hurting your daughter. He also said this wasn’t the first time he had heard her crying like that.”

My stomach tightened.

“What do you mean?”

The detective opened his notebook.

“He told the dispatcher that he had been keeping records of incidents involving your husband for several months.”

I stared at him.

My father had never told me that.

Not once.

“Why would he do that without telling me?”

The detective’s voice softened.

“That’s something you’ll have to ask him when he’s able to speak.”

I looked through the window toward my daughter’s treatment room.

For months, I had believed my husband was simply strict. I had convinced myself that his obsession with grades was a personality flaw, that his anger was something we could manage, that his increasingly rigid rules were temporary.