Sometimes she is only a person who has not yet decided to.

I have thought since about how strange it is that the largest power most of us hold is the power we never use — the simple, quiet capacity to stop.

For eight years I had believed myself powerless in that family, and I had experienced my powerlessness as real, as a fact about the world rather than a choice I was making.

Constance drained my accounts; I felt I could not stop her.