The Sweetest Bribe Offered

I was eight when I saw what happened behind the garage. I knew something terrible had been done because no one would look at me properly afterward. That night a man I trusted sat on my bed and told me I'd misunderstood everything. Then he gave me gifts ' toys, money, sweets whenever I asked. Every time I got scared, something new appeared in my hands. The fear never left, it was just fed into silence. Years later the crime finally surfaced without me. They called it 'new evidence.' I called it what it always was. A paid-for childhood.